Vulnerability
by Tree Wyrm
Summary: WARNING: Contains spoilers if you have not completed Mass Effect 2. This story is starts at the two hours just before Commander Shepherd and her crew on the Normandy hit the Omega Relay. Garrus and Shepherd have become romantically involved.
1. Chapter 1: Connection

14 March 2010

Connection

Disclaimer: the characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: contains sexually explicit material - 16yrs+ readers only please!

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepard too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepard, so I'll try to leave those parts up to your imagination.

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"...Now shut up and stop worrying."

She threw him a sly smile, which was exactly what he'd come to expect of his commander as of late, since - well... Since she'd come out with this crazy idea that to ease his tension – which she had apparently 'noticed' – they should 'let off steam together'. _Yeah. Sure._ He'd said. _If we can find a way to make it work._ He'd said. _And now I'm going to run like hell. _He should have said. All the while beneath his cool exterior the words _"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..." _were running on loop in his head like the music in Flux before it got blasted to hell by the unusual combination of a sentient ship (Sovereign), a rogue Spectre (Saren), and AIs (the Geth - or rather, as it turned out: the indoctrinated half of them).

No, wait, the music had stopped. There _had_ been music. He'd put it on. She'd just turned it off. She was standing in front of him now, pale blue light of the fish tank colouring her complexion and reflecting in her eyes, expecting some kind of response. _Relax_. She'd told him. The word sunk through from his ears to his brain. Garrus was starting to feel a lot less like he had on the top floor of that base on Omega - waiting for death with nothing to lose - and a lot more like when he had sighted her through his scope... In that moment he had laid eyes on her corporeal reality and suddenly realised the person most influential to his life had not only just walked back into it from the dead, but that suddenly it wasn't just his _own_ life he'd got to think about from then on. He hadn't liked _that_ feeling. Last time he'd felt like that, he failed. Sure it was a threat and a bribe that had turned someone he trusted into a murdering liar, betraying him and betraying the remaining members of his team to their deaths... But _Garrus_ had been responsible: he should have seen it coming before the people _he_ was responsible for... suffered untimely and unpleasant deaths at the hands of _his _enemies - _Garrus' _enemies. His team had died for him, because they had believed in him, and because they had taken bullets that _really..._ were meant for him.

_Every time, it's never me. They aim at me, the universe tries to kill me but it's never me that dies. Someone always takes the goddamn fall for me. Even her._ But here she was. She was the only one to actually come back. He thanked the gods for small miracles, and even more for the bigger ones... like her resurrection.

"I want something to go right for once..." He caught his own speech, saying more than he had meant to. Damn it he never seemed to be able to concentrate much recently. She was right to see it, it was there plain as day. But his lack of concentration was especially present around _her_. Maybe it was because he still couldn't quite fathom what it was all supposed to mean, why she had been returned into his life. Was it because the universe had decided she was too important to lose? Or was it no co-incidence that after meeting her previous lover on Horizon she had suddenly paid more attention to him? He _had_ heard humans talk of responding to rejection in a way called 'being on the rebound'. It was not a behaviour often found in turians. If a turian got rejected he'd go get drunk somewhere, think about getting even in some way if he felt suitably dishonoured, or he'd just go find something to kill to ease his foul temper.

Mind you, it could be argued that most of those turian males – at least those Garrus typically met – were, like himself, away from the homeworlds of their species and there was not exactly a large number of females available towards which to make advances, let alone 'rebound to'. Not unless you count asari, and Garrus had never found asari that attractive. Shepard, on the other hand, had more than enough human males to chose from on this ship. Garrus had even noted Thane gave her more than a passing glance (and he at least looked slightly humanoid) but no, Shepard had come to Garrus. She'd asked _him_ here. Garrus had never found humans attractive either, as a matter of fact... But something always drew him to this female human, and recently, he'd even started to notice the fact that she _was _indeed female. He really did wonder if he was going crazy.

Was this choice? Was it guilty reciprocation of her advances? Was he just desperate not to lose her again: his mentor and his last remaining friend? Whatever it was that brought him here, whatever it was he was feeling towards her now, it was earnest. Could something between them really be right? "Just once..." Was this his rightful place? To support her in any way possible... to get the job done? He just wanted everything to be alright, mournfully desperate not to slip up. Just once. "Just -"

The unending uncertainty and the infinite questioning abruptly came to a halt. Her hand was against his temple. As it slid down the cybernetic plate embedded in the side of his skull, she completely disarmed his mind of linguistic capability. As her fingers traced down the scars, their warmth rinsed away all the questions that gnawed at him. How quickly he had lost his self-assurance, his assumptions of what this time with her was going to be. He'd have been furious with himself had he been able to think straight. Instead he found himself leaning towards her, as she leaned towards him.

He stared into her eyes as their foreheads touched. She was warm. It was strange and yet familiar... like he was being guided by some higher force. He found himself placing his fingers on her shoulder, and stroking them gently down her arm, maintaining eye contact. She did not flinch. She barely blinked. There was no sly smile now. It was completely unknown territory. He could smell her scent, damp and fresh and slightly fragranced from the shower, it was... oddly comforting. As his fingers reached her elbow, she reached up to stroke down his jaw, down his mandible, which brought out of him a soft, purring sigh as he let lose the breath he had forgotten he'd been holding. He hadn't flinched, and still he stared down into her eyes. He stroked down her forearm and she slid her arm against his touch until her hand met his. Ever so gently, their fingers investigated one another until they interlocked.

Slowly Shepard sidestepped, drawing her head away from his, but never breaking eye contact, and he followed her: every motion smooth, synchronous with hers. It was a little like slow dancing – the way he swayed each step mirror-fashion so that they never strayed more than a foot apart. _Hunter sense_, she thought. Like the martial arts training exercises she had learned from her father's classes – how you would learn to match each other's movements in close proximity, weight shift for weight shift, circling and moving as one without touching. _Garrus_ was equally that good. She had seen his elegance in hand-to-hand combat, and had not been surprised to learn he had been one of the best. Now he matched her, motion for motion. She'd almost wanted pain from this encounter – wanted disregard, wanted what she'd been warned about in the literature Mordin had sent her on Turian mating practices. But this was definitely not what she had expected, this hadn't been what she'd had in mind. He was being so gentle. It made no sense.

She backed away and he followed, and the whole time she could not break his stare, this... invisible connection. It was as if something was guiding her, like all this was playing out just as it should. They reached the bed, both perched on the edge, fingers still interlocked. She stroked the unscarred side of his face, removing the eyepiece that had always been a permanent accessory and placed it onto the nearby coffee table. Turning back to see his face un-hidden for the first time she was taken aback by his eyes... His eyes were so, so beautiful, and so trusting. Tenderly she stroked his cheek, tracing the line of his indigo tattoo. He again pressed his forehead to hers and briefly they closed their eyes as he cupped her face with his palm. Mirror-like they each drew their fingers down each other – his stroked down her neck and beneath her hair, hers around his fringe to rub the scaled skin beneath and down the back of his neck. They both breathed long and deep, she sighed as his talon glided over her collarbone, he rumbled low and deep as she touched beneath the fringe and when she stroked the softer skin of his throat. Five fingers, so delicately boned... and yet somehow strong and dextrous. He was already impressed by how she seemed to find just the right places, and _uhhnnn..._ _it feels good..._

They each spared a glance over one another, each having the same instinct. Their fingers snaked lose of each other then drew themselves to the fastenings of clothing. His eyes drifted occasionally to her fingers as they worked her dress uniform loose, just as her eyes flowed over the fastenings to his turian blue tunic coming undone by his talons. Considering peripheral vision during combat could save your life, it was amusing how now each worked their will so as not to be drawn to break eye contact except to snatch glimpses of the bare skin before them. Carefully he dared touch her again, taking in with his fingers the soft un-armoured sensation of her smooth human skin. It was warm to the touch, surprisingly so. Her hands, her fingers, were cooler as she stroked them under his chin eliciting a soft purr from his throat. How could her fingers know him so well..?

The soft sounds she was making as he drew his fingers down her chest were extremely... _interesting..._ He could feel the urge growing inside him to remove whatever remained of their clothing and plunge himself into her, for she was _so_ enticing... _Damn I don't care if she's not turian, I __want__ her. _He had no intent to hurt her, but he was oddly unconcerned about that – it was not conscience that stopped him. It was something... else. It was instead pure will, something determining that he wanted to rebel against every turian instinct that might otherwise be roaring for him to take his satisfaction right now, yelling _Take her! _This was getting stranger by the minute...

Staring into those blue eyes was going to turn her to jelly. She could feel it. Everything, _everything_ was slipping away from her reach... all of her other thoughts, where she was, even who she was until there was just him, here, now. She couldn't remember what she had expected, or what she had wanted, hell she couldn't even remember her name if he should ask it, as he slid his hand down gently to her waist, talons pressing carefully just below the rim of her lower garments. Gentle. He was being so unbelievably _gentle_. Still he stared down into her eyes, never once flinching at the sight of her obviously alien body as she had worried he might. He was drawing closer to her now, and she found herself longing to feel his arms around her.

She stroked the taut muddy brown skin pulled over tightly wound muscles stringing lengthy arms to powerful shoulders. His skin was tough and thick, much like his personality: he was tough, and he was rough. She knew these things. He could be one hell of stubborn un-moving son of a bitch when he got a thorn in his side. While the rage he expressed may not have been as violent as that she had witnessed in Wrex or Grunt, when she _had_ on occasion caught his eye and saw what Garrus was holding back, she sometimes wondered that if unleashed, his furry might make even a krogan run away. Such fire seemed to burn inside him, behind eyes of cool blue flame. But it was a different animal staring down at her now, touching her, caressing her... His eyes were like water – warm and tempting and she was willingly drowning her inhibitions in them. Carefully she rose to her feet, and stood confidently before him as she removed her boots, dropping each to thud on the floor, and slowly unzipped and dropped her trousers, pleasantly surprised when a turian hand slid down over her hips following the emerging skin as the cloth fell to the floor.

Garrus observed lazily as she stood before him, her head only slightly higher than his even while he still sat on the edge of her low bed. He slid his thumb back up the inner side of her legs, fascinated by the downy hair that seemed to cover much of her skin all over in different colours and coarseness. He gently pulled her towards him, sliding his hand over her rounded hind. He stared into her eyes as he softly nuzzled what turned out to be very silky skin just above the line of her underwear. He watched with interest as she made to moan, throwing her head back and sliding her hands over his fringe and between the fronds - this made him growl with primal interest – he wanted _more_. His growl reverberated through her lower body and she gasped and groaned, and he nearly forgot that there had been a purpose besides this that he had drawn her _this_ close: with his other hand he undid his own boots, careful of the spurs. He could smell something new here at this end of her body, a strange, musky scent that spoke of gender, of readiness, and urgency. Smelling all those signals _should_ have been enough to push him over the edge: to drive him to throw her down to the floor onto her hands and knees and do to her as he would to one of his own species, but again, he found this apparently infinite control.

He rose to his feet, drawing his mouth upwards over her body as he did so. He spared a moment to nuzzle the stranger architecture of her upper body, these sweeping curves that hung without bone, just tissue, soft and malleable. She had again thrown her head back as he had done this, exposing her vulnerable neck for him to slide his mandible against as he rose. He drew his fingers up her spine and under her hair, cupping her head and bringing her eyes once again to meet with his own. After a moment catching their breath, he touched his head to hers and silently bade she stay there. She had pressed her body to his, and he could feel her heat spreading enticingly through his scales. Carefully with the backs of his talons he drew one hand down from her cheek, and very slowly he moved down her body this way, undoing his own lower garments as his touch allowed him to unlock her body from his without her seeming to notice. Once he stood before her naked, he pulled his head away from hers and cocked it to one side as she opened her eyes once more.

She spared a lengthy look over his body downwards and back up again. His heart skipped a beat in a moment's panic as he awaited her reaction. But he had nothing to fear. Returning to meet his eyes as she began to slide one hand down from his head – where she been since he seduced her body with his growls and his nuzzling – she smiled. It wasn't a smile he was accustomed to seeing... But it was clear she was eager to continue as she slid her hand down over his pronounced collarbone, down over the armoured skin of his chest to his waist, running her thumbs gently over what she quickly learned to be sensitive skin of his abdomen. He growled and dropped his head into her neck, sending shivers down her spine as he gently gripped her waist in both hands and purred into her... and turned her towards the bed.

She stared up into his eyes as slowly he backed her towards the edge of the bed. To her surprise he carefully hitched her up, as easily as he might lift a rifle, and laid her down on the bed, sliding his fingers through her silky hair, laying it out across the covers. Gently he pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose, and stroked his entire hand over her forehead and again through the fine strands of her hair as he leaned over her, with a tenderness that made her gasp. For a moment her eyes watered at the kindness in his expression. She reached up to do the same to him, and he frowned as he pushed into her hand and let out the longest, mournful sigh she'd ever heard a turian make. Somewhere inside a little part of her was rather confused by all of this: it wasn't what she'd originally been after, it wasn't what she planned, and it certainly is not what she had expected, but... she almost wept at the beauty of it all... _You'll know it._ Her mother used to tell her. _You'll know it when love finds you._ Try as she might not to, Shepard was beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe...

He seemed to recognise the vulnerability she was feeling and slid the arm he had used to brace his weight above her, to under her shoulder, still managing to reach a stroking talon to her cheek. He could feel the heat rising from her body as he lingered above, and he felt so stilled, so calm seeing in her expression a look he had never seen before. He once caught a flash of it when she had seen Alenko on Horizon, quickly put away again when she found that two years was long enough not to be able to go back, to no longer be able to simply slot back into things as they were before. But now... now she was staring into _his_ eyes, and all he wanted to do was to hold her, to keep her here, like this... Here, in this state, he could protect her. He honestly thought he could stop time, and keep her here with him, no more dying, no more sadness, or abandonment, no more pain.

He stroked her from her neck down over her breasts and she moaned softly. She did so as she looked into his eyes, and he was very nearly stunned by the intimacy - he'd never looked into a lover's eyes like this before. He continued drawing his hand down her body, down her waist to her hips, sliding his fingers down to her thighs... She arched her back towards him in response. He felt her shift her legs. A glance down showed him that she was inviting him to lie between them. This, he recalled, was the way in which humans would often mate, and he wished now with all his heart that he be able to mould his body to hers as she was inviting him to do. It was almost heartbreaking to realise turians – meaning himself included – were too long limbed for that, being wired for strength and speed... But he earnestly wanted to join her there and continue to stare into her beautiful eyes.

He was just about to sink his hope and lie down beside her when – again as if his thoughts were guided by some invisible force – it occurred to him that if he brought her to the edge of the bed, he likely _could_ do so... Oh and he really, _really_ wanted to. His excitement was momentarily paused by an instant of humour: he had also noticed, looking down, that she still had on the most flimsy of undergarments. It was something he really did not understand the purpose for, but right now it just seemed so cute he nearly grinned. _Like that tiny piece of cloth would mean anything or stop anything?_ Barely a semblance of protection. He smiled, _symbolic perhaps?_ He wondered.

He kneeled either side of her knees, to which she looked a little puzzled, but was reassured by his smile as she persisted in stroking his mandibles, spurring his lust all the more so... Yet still he kept his cool. _No_. He wanted to be aware of every moment, he wanted to drink in every sound she made, live every single sensation, and stare into her eyes when he sank himself into her. With the arm under her shoulders, he lifted her towards him and appropriately she embraced him. It had already occurred to him how little she weighed. Keeping nose to nose, nuzzling her to keep her there, he quickly hitched up her bottom to which she emitted a short small high pitched squeal of surprise, making him chuckle. He was pleasantly shocked to find she had brought her knees up underneath him so that as he lifted her she quickly swung her legs around his hips and hung tightly to him – not something a turian could do, no. He was shocked more because he hadn't expected to get this close to her opening warmth already. For a moment he just stayed very still, and groaned, as she did too when she felt his arousal pressing against her: definitely _fully_ aroused.

She rocked forwards as she hung, then slowly slid back down his abdomen, brushing herself against him. He moaned and nearly dropped her, having to steady himself with both hands on the bed, leaving her hanging there. Thankfully she stopped what she was doing for the moment, not without a small giggle and a nuzzle of his nose. A few deep breaths and he backed them both to the edge of the bed, only holding her again as he positioned her - just on the edge. He was just about to start kissing her belly having set her down when a pillow thudded the quilt beside his head. Kindness in her smile beamed back as he looked up – she had figured out what he was up to, and had thought about his knees. _His knees!_

He chuckled as he shook his head, he couldn't help it, and she giggled again - _not_ a noise he was accustomed to hearing until this evening. It was normally a full-out bellowing laugh he would hear from her, but the laughs he heard from her now somehow seemed far more sweet. Not that he had heard her laugh often at all on the new, Cerberus-rebuilt SSV Normandy... in fact it suddenly dawned on him that he might not have heard her properly laugh at all since he had come aboard. It was a _good_ sound. He shook his head again, in a vain attempt to explain his knees were more than well-armoured enough to cope with the hard floor, but the resolve in her expression as she began to frown told him he'd better take it else she'd speak... and he feared that if either of them uttered a word then the spell upon them might be broken. So he took it, shoved it under his knees, and knelt for a moment as he slid both his hands over her body, slipping a talon under the elastic of her underwear, and with a little help, removed them.

He raised a brow for a moment – _fur? _He had noticed at times human armpits had this strange eruption of hair, so it did make a strange sort of sense that there might be fur here too. Very different in appearance to her hair though. Careful not to look overlong, he looked back to up just in time to catch the nervousness in her eyes. He stared back with confidence as he nuzzled along her knee and up the inside of her thigh. She threw her head back, and snaked her own hands down her breasts and over her body. _Damn... _He'd _never _seen her do _anything _like that before, and it was so unbelievably sexy. Again he could smell the musky lubrication seeping from her, readying her for him. He growled long and deep as he nuzzled near the source, allowing himself to really, really, _need _to fall into her. Stroking his hands down her legs as he nuzzled along each of her inner thighs, he spared this moment to observe her erotic behaviour. _Is this really Shepard?_ He found himself wondering... The woman who when held by the throat, dangling over a large drop by that bastard Saren, had fearlessly punched the cybernetically-enhanced discrace-to-the-turian-race squarely in the jaw and sent him reeling?

_Were you like this with Alenko..?_

That thought stung, but it dawned on him what that human might have to say if he were to know what Garrus and Shepard were getting up to as of late. _You let her go. Your loss._ He thought to Alenko. And to Shepard: _I'm__ not going to let you go._ He thought this as he lifted himself over her, and gently pressed himself against her body, sliding his hand under her neck and around the back of her skull. He brought her forehead up to press against his. _I want you to look into my eyes as we do this – I want you to know I know it's __you__ I'm here with._ Not some turian woman he'd known, not just him finding release in the closest substitute he had available. _I want to know you know it's me, and only me, moving inside you_. He thought to her, and with the point seemingly made, she continued to look into his eyes, only snatching a glance downwards to see something not so dissimilar to human male genitalia, just thinner and slightly more wrinkled. Like she cared – he could do anything to her right now and she'd be willing to try it. She trusted him. Completely.

She helped him line up, giving a few gentle strokes of it before she did so... prompting a deep, lustful growl. Still he resisted the urge just to thrust into her. He wanted to keep her safe, and he wanted to fully remember this moment, that it was _her_ he was inside. Sharply she lifted her legs and rested them over his angular hips. _Ready._ She smiled sweetly with a slight nod.

He pushed in gently just a little at first – she whimpered softly as she stared into his eyes, and stroked his neck a little harder and faster. Damn he wanted to go faster, but restrained himself. He braced himself over her with one arm propped under her neck, and with the other he steadied her attentions towards him, placing one of her hands to massage the skin under his fringe, and the other to stroke along his mandible, or to gently finger the inside of his collar plate. Her fingers were so amazingly pliant to his fancies he found himself pulling out a little and pushing in further. He steadied his own attentions, and made sure to stare back into her eyes as he did so, watching her reactions carefully. Slowly he pushed into her again, sinking himself into her entirely, growling as he did so to slow his breathing – determined to be careful, determined to live this moment and remember it.

She seemed to melt in his blue fire stare, and squirmed against him as he stayed still, moaning softly as she did so. She was gently squeezing his waist with her thighs, and they were rhythmically pulling him deeper and then releasing him. It certainly made him _want_ to move. So he began to. Slowly at first withdrawing – to which she cried pathetically. So he pushed back into her. It would be so easy to go faster now... to lose himself inside her... but this was a learning opportunity, and he had every intention of learning everything he could about her. After all, there was no guarantee he'd ever get another chance with death awaiting on the horizon through the Omega Relay. He cursed himself for waiting this long: _damn if I'd known what I was missing..._

A slow entry seemed to be received the best but withdrawing made her cry out, winding him up all the more so. He still couldn't quite believe he was still in control at this point. The faster he pulled out the tighter she squeezed him when he slid back inside – both with her legs _and_ with some sublime mechanism he had discovered she had _inside_. And how she _could_ squeeze him! She practically pulsed _internally_ as she became more and more aroused. It wasn't just intriguing it was almost enough to make this turian male lose his mind because it felt that good. _If this is what all females do_, he told himself, _then until now you've been doing things all wrong_, so said the revelation he had accidentally stumbled upon simply by taking his time.

He enjoyed every sound, every motion of her rocking up to meet him as he stroked his hand over her curves. _This is where I'm meant to be._ He thought to himself as she writhed beneath him, her heat searing through his body and his hands with every touch of her skin. Even her human mammalian breasts were beginning to make a sizeable erotic impression as he noticed the way they would move with even the slightest bodily motion. He would arch his back and nuzzle them a little as he squeezed them until she groaned and pulled him back so that the soft skin of his belly slid up and down her own.

He no longer had to concentrate on his attentions: instinct echoed what he wanted to be doing anyway. He did what she wanted and he learned fast once he allowed his instincts to take control: he responded to her cries and whimpers, she responded to his deeper growls and his moans. Perhaps it was then that he realised he had buried his face into her neck and her hair, inhaling her scent as he brought them both closer to release. _No biting._ He told himself sternly. Her skin was far too delicate to allow it. But she was close now – he could feel it, and it was driving him wild, and he could feel himself getting as swollen as he was wont to get as he slipped in and out of her, drowning in her wet warmth.

He thanked whatever self-control he had left that had made him aware of it before it happened – before he reached his end. Again he tilted her head forwards to look into her eyes, and fire came back at him through her eyes as he did so. She pierced him with her stare as she bit her lip, then cried out again and threw back her head once more as he thrust into her. _No. I want you to watch, and __I__ want to see it happen in your eyes._ Again he brought her head up for her eyes to once more meet with his as he continued to move, and with his free hand he took one of hers, elbow resting on the bed and held it, gently squeezed it. She twitched a smile, her eyes watering and with sheer determination they maintained each other's gaze.

He _thought_ he'd had great sex before. _Thought_ he was actually pretty good at it. So he'd always been told. However nobody, no turian had _ever_ responded to his touch the way she did, no woman had given him the incredible vocal performance he was receiving, and he found some small part of him wondering why it was that this all just felt _so right_, and why it was that humans and turians did not seem to have discovered this ecstasy of being together in this way before. _Probably a good thing._ He managed to think between thrusts. _Our species might have wound up extinct._ Maybe it was just him and her, but he was beginning to realise how much he wanted to do this again. Then, abruptly, every thought evaporated as he stared into her eyes and she squeezed his hand, crying out long and hard as he felt her pulsing quicken as she tightened around him, and his head swam as she squeezed unto her end. He was in awe. He stared into her eyes as he quickly reciprocated, spilling himself into her as her throbbing forced him to do so, letting out a roar that was probably audible down in engineering the way human ships were built... Not that he cared.

Gasping for breath, he sunk into her as far as he could and just... stayed there, lifting her head to his as they stared into one another, vision-blurred as they each were by the hormones coursing through their veins. She was still squeezing his hand, and he hers as their fingers coiled, uncoiled and recoiled around each other. He was about to dare say something, something he'd probably boot himself for saying later, but too soon the spell was broken by something else. The call came in from EDI – it was time to go. _15 minutes until out we go through the Omega Relay and all hell breaks loose_. He was brought crashing back to the woes of reality, a galaxy bent on ruining every precious moment he ever had. He hated it. Hated EDI, as he saw this beautiful soul retreat back behind a familiar strong, stable exterior shell of a woman he'd come to know as Shepard. He released her hand, and back away, pulling himself from her. But just then her expression changed and the way she looked – stunned, frightened, panicked – for just a second... that was the worst thing of all. It was as if something that was never meant to carry all that weight had just curled up and died from the strain of it all. He was about to speak, wanted to say something, anything – he even felt like apologising the way she looked at him now. She sat up sharply and uttered in her usual no-nonsense voice:

"On my way EDI."

She spared a smile for him. It was her usual, tough, _it'll be alright _smile. Only it didn't fill him with the confidence it did before. It made him feel like he was dying. He almost felt sick. He opened his mouth and she stifled it with "Don't worry – we'll talk about it later. Provided there is a later. C'mon. Go get ready." She was still naked but she could have been wearing all her armour and he'd not have noticed the difference. It was like a wall had just sprung up between them, and he felt so raw.

"OK." He nodded. Forcing a semblance of control to his voice as he tried to hold her eyes for just one more moment, "I'll see you on the other side." Throwing on his tunic, he grabbed his boots and trousers and headed for the corridor – he could dress the rest of himself in the corridor or on the way down – that lift always took forever anyhow. Really he just wanted out, out of her way. Then he reprimanded himself for still thinking about it all. _Now is not the time._ And he put it all away, to deal with it later, as she had said – if there was even to be a later.

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Author note: This is the first fanfic I've ever written, and the first thing I've ever put out for people to read. Friendly guidance welcome.


	2. Chapter 2: In Retrospect

14 March 2010

In Retrospect

Disclaimer: the characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: contains some sexually implicit material.

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepard too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepard, so I'll try to leave those parts up to your imagination.

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[_Thunk_] The tarnished, badly battered, blood-splattered once-shiny-blue (but not anymore and not for a long time) armour thudded on impact with the floor. The gauntlets were the last to go. Garrus was glad of having gone first for food, it had left the crew quarters empty and the showers free for when he got to them. He was especially glad of the silence it had granted him – he was glad to be alone. Alone, to contemplate things he'd not given himself chance to think about since the suicidal mission began, which despite several wounds and fractured limbs, had thankfully turned out to be not-so-suicidal after all. They'd even managed to mount a minor rescue mission. Still, there were stations on the Normandy left un-manned, only a few but enough that even the survivors had stayed mute since their post-rescue elated thanks. Even they had returned to realise that it had only been a partial rescue. Not a single colonist had been found alive.

Celebration would be a subdued affair, and nobody wanted to talk about what they had seen happen to the crew that were _not_ released from the collector pods in time, let alone think about the number of colonists who had suffered the same horrific fates before them... Such grim thoughts had dogged Garrus since he got back onboard the Normandy, he expected everyone else was feeling much the same way. But this brush with death not just his own (for he was newly patched up from taking a shot to the stomach), but the deaths of thousands, was forcing him to re-evaluate his priorities, and think about other things that had happened... Like with Shepard. It was gnawing away at him... The time spent in Shepard's quarters before the strike, in particular.

He'd thought shortly after arriving at her cabin that he'd completely screwed it up - lost his nerve... That she had wanted the evermore so cocky bastard he'd moulded himself to be to survive her death - harder than the man she knew before. Seeing the only person apparently capable of improving the universe - someone as strong as Shepard - get killed that easily had been demoralising, disheartening, and downright gut-wrenching. He figured someone owed her to keep up the good fight. At first he'd tried to go back to C-sec, but he had been infinitely frustrated at how unable he had been to make as much of a dent there as she (or rather they, together, the whole team) had done roaming the galaxy. So he had purposefully slipped off the net to go about forcing the issue in a place he knew there was no shortage of criminals, and very little to stop him from getting something done. _Yeah._ He reminded himself sarcastically: _Omega worked out just great, didn't it?_

Anyhow... He'd thought the familiarity of his arrogance (he'd always had a cocky streak) had perhaps given her comfort, and that his forcibly stronger confidence and ability to turn pain into (far more useful) anger had been what had swayed her – _made_ her pay attention to him. She'd said she didn't want anyone else, she wanted him. Maybe he was her only constant? Familiarity, when all else had deserted her. There was at least Tali, for whom he would be ever grateful for her having re-joined them, adding a semblance of the team spirit they had once had as a group fighting Saren and Sovereign. So he'd had in mind to be as much the arrogant bastard as he'd always been, plus the darker edge he had lately acquired and a whole lot of aggression. He'd wanted to be whatever she expected - not because he was loyal, or because he found her particularly attractive (humans were not his thing) but just because it was rather nice to get the attention and... Well. He'd pretty much alienated or gotten killed anyone else that had ever mattered to him... 'Archangel of Death' that he was. Not quite what the locals had called him, but it was how he had come to think of himself. He'd figured it had suitable double meaning: a cool way to describe how he dealt with the corrupt and the unjust, and death also seemed to contagiously jump to anyone that hung around him for too long.

Shepard however, was apparently immune to the effects of staying in the company of death, and there was nobody else in the galaxy he respected more than her. Garrus had figured their union to be a mutually beneficial arrangement in that way – she didn't die, and he killed anything else that got too close to her. But hours ago in her quarters, things did not turn out the way he'd planned. Instead, he'd melted away into _that_ jabbering emotional wreck. He _had_ assumed that his pathetic deterioration into 'begging the universe for something to go right for himself just this once' had pretty much signalled the end of the evening there and then. He recollected how to his surprise it hadn't – she hadn't turfed him out of her quarters at all. Now he was wondering if what had _actually _followed was truly real. Looking back now he wasn't so sure about what she had wanted from him at all... It had all been so different from what he had expected. _Totally, absolutely, not the plan_. To top it all, he couldn't just blame her, _he_ had been different too... And that was even harder to wrap his head around.

Something weird had happened, and he couldn't explain it. Nigh on two hours had disappeared in the time he had spent with her. The strong, relentless, domineering spirit he'd always seen in her had seemingly had an out-of-body experience and gone elsewhere, and someone else had taken its place in her body. And what the hell had he been doing? Of all the times he'd ever been with a woman, he'd _never_ done anything or behaved even remotely like that, and it hadn't been her telling him to behave that way either – it had been him. _He _had practically orchestrated it. He'd done nothing that he'd expected, even compared to the videos he'd seen during his attempts as 'researching' the topic beforehand (he really hadn't spent much time looking at them because he just couldn't stomach it). So he couldn't blame it on that either. Nothing explained his behaviour in retrospect. Yet despite the seemingly vast differences between what had happened, and both human sex (what it must surely be usually like according to those videos) and turian sex (for which he was perfectly well experienced at performing), he had _really _enjoyed it. And she... _She had responded like..._ He couldn't find the words. Beyond extreme arousal he swore he had touched her soul, like touching a god. And as you would expect from having touched a god, he had come back a different person.

He kept thinking it just had been so strange... He tried to stop thinking about her. About the way she had looked. Tried not to... But it was too late. He was already thinking about how she had gripped his hand, how they had stared into each other's eyes. Something so intimately shared he felt nobody else could understand, and he couldn't explain it even if he wanted to. Hell he wasn't even sure if _he_ understood it. It brought something raw to the surface, something incredibly painful. Then he remembered the look on her face as the call had come in to hit the Omega Relay and he had pulled away... His heart sunk into the memory and the raw hurt worsened as he asked himself miserably: _what have I done..? _Turians did not, as a rule, cry. But he _nearly_ wept... alone in the crew cabins, clutching his face in his hands with his heart pounding like it was going to burst its way through his chest.

He must have stayed like that for an eternity when the door hissed open and a familiar frame appeared. The shock helped him put his thoughts aside for a moment as he listened for the inevitable sound of krogan curiosity. "Garrus." It was a question, but said in that typical 'stating a fact' manner of speaking that krogans had. Grunt had walked in and sat on the bed next to him (causing the mattress to seriously sink with his bulk). "How the hell do you sleep in these human pieces of soft fuzzy crap." Again a question, stated not asked.

"_I_ don't have a cabin, and certain _other_ crew members seem to have vouched for everywhere else on this ship... _or_ have their own sleeper pods. Yeah sure I might pass out in the forward batteries sometimes, but that bench sure as hell gives me a crook in the neck."

"Huh." Grunt snuffed indignantly. "I'm sure Shepard'd let you sleep in _her_ cabin." Garrus tried not to let his eyes pop out of their sockets in panic. It was a jibe, a challenge. Yet in a strange way Grunt was probably the closest thing he had to a friend on this ship besides Shepard (who he really couldn't face right now), and Tali never truly appreciated his sense of humour. Grunt likewise had found the turian interesting as an enemy come brother-in-arms, and while it was good to learn about your enemies he had also come to respect Garrus. Turians seemed too often to behave just as aloof as those damned asari. Garrus was the exception, he practically spat on all their collective bureaucratic, hypocritical asses and Grunt _liked_ that. He didn't just stand for what he thought was right, he'd damn well fight for it. He was a tough little bastard, surmised Grunt. But he looked different at the moment – almost beaten... despite what Grunt considered a massive success from what should have been a mission to end all of their lives.

Garrus just scowled at Grunt for the time being. Perhaps he hadn't figured that it would have been so obvious. Grunt was pleased to score the hit, it meant that despite his tank-bred origins there was obviously some knowledge, _some_ instincts he could rely on. _That_ was reassuring. Garrus on the other hand, was seriously disturbed by Grunt's apparent insight. _But then again_, Grunt sneered as he thought to himself, _I_ _have__ just made the situation about ten times worse for him..._ Grunt _almost _ felt satisfied enough to leave, but something – pity was an ugly word so he figured it was curiosity – made him wonder why the turian had been sat sulking in the crew cabin for such a long time.

He'd always seen in Garrus something that echoed in himself – a sense of not knowing exactly quite where you fit in... Not something he'd ever admit to anyone else, especially not his newly-joined clan and certainly not to Shepard. Sure Garrus and the Commander were old comrades, but the turian didn't seem much to like this 'Cerberus' they'd each found themselves working for. For his own part, Grunt had felt like "Hell yeah, joined a clan, something to fight for!" at first, but once the novelty had worn off, well... He still felt just a little out of place. _Damned hormones _he suspected the likely cause.

He had been wondering lately about how a male might relate to someone from the opposite sex from his own world. He'd never met a female krogan. What were they like? How would he impress a prospective mate? Somehow it just didn't feel right that upon reading his resume, a horde of females would simply request mating contracts through the goddamn extranet – that felt more like something a blasted salarian would do. The genophage had forced Urdnot Wrex to do some strange things homeworld for sake of breeding...

Grunt was confident his instincts would give him plenty direction in the mechanics of it all but it was the bit before that – the courtship – he was curious about. Maybe it was because being tank-bred he'd skipped straight to adult, and that didn't give you much time to learn how to _talk_, well not about stuff like that anyway. He was contemplating visiting the female clan next time he was on Tuchanka, and pride more than anything wanted him not to make an ass of himself. Watching the turian squirm around the commander when she wasn't looking had at least made him feel more confident that he could do a better job, oh and it had been pretty damn funny at times too. However right now he got the impression that Garrus was in even more trouble than before.

"How...?" Garrus began... then "It's not..." and finally gave up trying to figure out how a krogan could pick up these things. He certainly hadn't before pegged himself as besotted with Shepard – not to the extent that someone else might notice. Well not until the two hours spent in her quarters before the last mission. Maybe Grunt had seen him hitch the lift up there or something... Anyhow he wanted to avoid giving the krogan the satisfaction of making him squirm, so he threw Grunt something he thought should shut him up and keep him from prying further into personal matters.

"She didn't _mind_ at all." He stated, confidently. "But it wasn't what I expected." Indeed, Grunt was quiet a moment, taking in the frankness, and the confidence.

"Well." Grunt began. "I figure it was likely _more_ than you expected."

_OK now I __know__ I'm in trouble._ Thought Garrus, _if a __krogan__ of all people can figure out that much_. _But why the hell is he even talking about it to me anyway? _He dropped his head and shook it, mandibles a-twitch in irritation. _Oh what the hell. Why not chat with the korgan on matters of love? _ It wasn't like he could sink any lower than he was feeling – remembering how she had unceremoniously turfed him out of her cabin after the fact pretty much made him hit rock bottom. Damn he hadn't felt this low in a while. But he wasn't about to lose out in a battle of will against a young krogan upstart.

"Hell yeah." _Let's see if I can make your skin crawl then you nosey son of a bitch._ "I've never done anything like it, and believe me, I _more_ than liked it."

To Garrus' surprise Grunt just nodded slowly. "People think us krogans immune to that sentimental crap – hell even my own people believe it isn't the way our people work. But being tank-bred gives you a different perspective on life. I _am_ pure krogan, and I _listen_ to my instincts – and I figure I do it more than any other krogan has done in 2000 years of civilisation. And my instincts tell me there's more to it than just mating." Grunt shook his head. Garrus was starting to think this youngster was beginning to sound a bit like old Wrex at times.

"Females are just as tough as males in my species, and you gotta figure that leads to plenty of agro." He chuffed, grinning as he threw the turian a sideways stare. Garrus ignored it, he'd heard more than enough krogan bragging in his lifetime to have become quite immune to it. Regardless Grunt continued: "But the more I listen to my instincts, the more I figure there's got to be something more co-operative about the way we _should_ be. Like working together. Like I fight for her, she fights for me, we fight for our children, and we survive because we're the most bad-ass bastards in the galaxy."

It was practically romantic, Garrus could scarcely believe what he was hearing. This really was getting quite surreal. Especially when he felt comfortable enough to voice his own thoughts: "I'm beginning to wonder the same about turians." He admitted. "Last millennia or so has seen a _real_ cultural shift. People don't have to stay rooted to the same spot, in fact, its better we mix for genetics sake between colonies, so, casual relationships are frequent. Having a mate normally... complicates things, and the way things work it's hard for two of you to raise a family _and_ have careers so one of you stays at home with the kids, the other gets a well-paid job. Generally that means off-world. Not much time for big emotional attachment – and being apart that long it'd kill you if you got that close. Mate, have kids, and care for your family by ensuring they have a decent income to live on."

Grunt listened intently. _Studying your enemy again, are you Grunt? _Garrus briefly raised an brow in suspicion, before continuing regardless: "But I'm sure it probably wasn't always that way. I mean – there are legends, long forgotten – once had a history teacher who was particularly interested in them - she had some _very_ strange notions – where turians didn't just mate for life out of convenience and comfort, they did it in some weird intense emotional way that tied them inextricably together." Garrus sighed. "There are numerous ancient legends about a man and woman uniting to fight a common enemy, only able to do so by forming an incredibly intimate bond. Something to do with moving as one, becoming as one weapon. I figured it just meant they were _reeeeally_ good at hand-to-hand team combat. Now I'm wondering if over time we maybe lost the capacity for something... else."

"Dunno 'bout lost. Sure as hell you're wallowing in it right now."

"Huh." Was Garrus only response. The krogan's talent for intuitive insight into his personal life continued to surprise him.

Grunt looked up at the ceiling. "Figured I'd go meet me a female down on Tuchanka next time I'm around. The old clan boss probably figures if I could sire a few offspring, spread myself around a bit, it might just help break through the barriers imposed on us by the genophage. Give Urdnot a boost too. Hah! What do the humans say – 'Doing it for the nation'? Hahah!" It was a bellowing laugh, one that nearly deafened Garrus sitting within such close proximity. "But I'm not sure what _I_ want." Grunt cocked his head on one side. "You don't get to see your kids much as a male – you might not even know if a kid is yours or not. I've _heard_ the emptiness in a man's voice as he talks about the child he only _thinks_ was his. Makes me think I'd like to find a female, take her off Tuchanka, steal away somewhere – there's gotta be one female that resents being planet-bound and baby-making all her life." Grunt laughed a hearty laugh, and Garrus chuckled – just a little. It was still weird being cheered-up by a krogan. "Anyways... probably never gonna happen, and I'll just sire a child and that'll be it. You, on the other hand, already _have_ your female and you're probably gonna be tearing around the galaxy together 'til the day you both die."

Garrus slumped his shoulders and drooped his head again into his palms. "_Had_." He sighed, and pulled his fingers down his face as he spoke: "The way she threw me out when the call came through about hitting the Omega relay... It was like she put me in the airlock and I just got spaced."

Grunt winced, "Owch!" and laughed mockingly. Not _quite_ what Garrus had wanted. Not that he really wanted or expected any other kind of reaction from Grunt.

"That's gotta hurt. She's got some mean temper, that Shepard. Like fire in her step as well as her bullets. I guess she just has to be that tough. She's _aaaalllright_ for a human."

"Yeah." Garrus said, beginning to get irritated with the whole thing, "But who knows when _that's_ all going to drop away and I'm going to see _her_ again." _Did I just say that out loud? Have I always been this awful with words or is it just when I'm around Shepard or just thinking about her?_

Grunt just looked at him curiously. Garrus just figured he probably hadn't understood that. Sentimental as Grunt might have been painting the krogan, it was hard to see his species as having anything but hard, furious sex. Something Garrus had previously imagined turians and krogans had in common... until Shepard...

Grunt let out a huge sigh and exclaimed: "Well. Whatever happens, she'll remember." Who knows what Grunt had meant by that, but it was probably the best consolidating advice Garrus would have expected to hear from anyone. Either way it was a simple reminder of that one inescapable memory: he had stared into her eyes but she had stared _back_. He'd not been alone in experiencing that moment, every instinct told him that and he clung to the memory as if it were the air he breathed. Perhaps it was knowing that fact that suddenly made him realise he couldn't ask her for that moment ever again. If what he felt was right – that she really _had_ let her shielding drop away – then she had been _dangerously_ vulnerable. Feeling like _that_ had probably rendered her incapable of dealing with command responsibilities for that time. With a sinking in his heart Garrus suddenly felt awfully guilty for having stripped her of her every protection, only for her to have to mount it all up again when that blasted call from EDI came in.

"Go on. I've had enough of your krogan melodramatics to give even the most comprehensive text-book writer a lifetime of krogan updating to figure out."

"Pah. You've got it worse than me, turian. You'll _always_ have it worse than me." The krogan slapped him on the back, with a force that would have sent him reeling had he not already seen it coming and braced for it. Still stung like hell though. Then, with that, the strange encounter was over and Grunt was out of the door and off down the corridor.

Garrus stared into his hands, stared then in particular at the hand that had held hers, and _remembered_. He decided it _was_ alright for him to remember. It was alright to remember because he resolved himself not to bring the issue up with Shepard ever again, dare not try to get that close to her again. _If there ever is an end to our struggles, if there ever __is__ a happy "You've all done a brilliant job, saved the universe once and for all and now you can all retire" ending to all of this, maybe I'll try to talk to her then. If ever in the future I can see her soul... naked like that again... I want for her to be able to stay that way._

* * *

The clock ticked. Shepard lay on the bed on her back with her fingers interlocked, staring at the ceiling. She'd meant to go to bed, but had found herself fully dressed on autopilot after showering, but it wasn't like she thought she'd be able to sleep anyway. She had _tried_ to wash away the sights she'd seen at the Collector ship. _Nothing quite like watching someone get dissolved alive in front of you._ She smirked. Not laughing at what she'd seen, no. Laughing at herself. Because that was what _she_ had allowed to happen despite herself. Laughing at herself because of how pathetic she was, because she had failed those people – tens of thousands of colonists and who-knows-who-else. She recalled the sound of clawing fingernails, and muffled, horrific screams turned to diminishing gurgles. It made her furious. In fact, the more she'd thought about it, the more she gritted her teeth and laughed quietly at herself through her wrinkled up nose.

_Should never have taken the Normandy without back up to that system knowing how many ships had gone missing, you were overconfident... got yourself killed... Two years passed, all that time wasted, the galaxy got lulled into a false sense of security and then they undid everything you had done. Why? Because you were not there when they needed you. You're an idiot Shepard, a slow, fumbling fool. _She resolutely told herself: _So you're going to remember every face, and every name, of all the people you let down, and if you don't like it you either better __start__ liking it or you can damn well do a better job next time. Like leaving Ashley behind._ She goaded herself:_ You swore you'd do better. Remember?_

Frowning now. Frowning with fury. She was glad of one thing – she'd blown that place to hell, and pissed off the Illusive Man beyond measure by doing so. _Tough shit, you conniving bastard, you'd have to have figured out I'd have squared with you sooner or later. You should also have known I like big finales._ There _had_ been something else that had made her glad, during the mission. The snarl she wore subsided, the wrinkles on her nose all smoothed out and she relaxed her jaw. But thinking about _that_ was almost more painful than thinking about people dissolving before her eyes... It was something she could not turn into anger... It had been the huge relief she had felt seeing Garrus stand up straight – after stumbling backwards having taken a shot to the stomach.

It was hard to allow herself to feel that relief, because it made her feel so weak. Remembering him take the shot did worse things to her stomach. She couldn't help remembering how much she just wanted to hold him at that moment, run to him as he took the hit. If he'd have fallen, she'd not have abandoned him. She and Tali would have dragged his sorry ass back to the ship. Or she'd have stayed. _What's the point of living twice if the second time you can't chose when you go?_ But he'd been fine, and all she'd actually managed was to give him a touch on the elbow. _Do I really mean that?_ She asked herself... _Do I really feel that way about him that I'd want to stay with him and wait for the inevitable?_

Tears welled up and spilled silently, streaming to her ears as she closed her eyes, and recalled how she had lain here not 24hrs ago... with him moving inside her. How he had stared into her eyes. It had been unreal. She'd never felt so helpless, and yet so safe... But then the call had come in, and she'd practically thrown him out of her room before he'd even put his clothes on. _Why did I do that?_ Then she remembered – it just hurt so much knowing she'd got to go back to being 'Commander Shepard' that she'd had to get herself blindingly angry in order to resurrect all of those defences. Perhaps it had been the idea of being so disarmed as he had done to her that was just too much. The last time she'd dropped her guard she learned later to regret it, and she hadn't thought that she _could _ever let her guard down again afterwards – oh how wrong she had been. So very, very, wrong. She'd felt more _naked_ with Garrus than she'd ever felt in her life.... No. That wasn't a good way to think about it, it made her feel weak. Maybe it was just the confusion of it all – it was so far beyond the experience she had expected, or thought she had wanted. Maybe he'd just caught her off-guard that way. _Damn it._ She thought to herself, knowing what really rang true. She tried to stop thinking about it.

Truth be told she hadn't really been sure of what she'd wanted. Kaidan had tore a big haemorrhaging hole in her heart, and made her realise just how much more than two years of her life she had lost. However, maybe being dead had brought her back able to see things in a different light because lately she'd come to think that 'Staff Lieutenant Alenko' was rather _too_ concerned with his career and probably, honestly, always had been. She'd just been too blind to see it before. It was always "Breach of protocol" and "Fraternisation" with him. Sure she belonged to her job, always would. But she had entertained the thought of belonging to him also. Indeed a possession she had seemed to be to him at times, if albeit sometimes an inconvenient one.

He'd come far in two years – career-wise. And after the reaction she got from him on Horizon it was clear he valued _that_ higher than trusting her judgement. And after later receiving a message that pretty much summed up his intentions regarding their relationship in its last three words: "I don't know" – Well. Shepard had not been in the _mood_ to entertain his 'maybes'. After all by the time his 'maybes' turned into something fruitful, she might have been lying unconscious in a pod somewhere at the arse-end of a collector ship for all he knew. However, right now Shepard knew exactly who would be lying there in the pods next to hers: Garrus, likely Tali too. Maybe a few new faces. _But not him_. Definitely not him - not Alenko.

However... The stronger manifestation of herself yet reminded her of the faces that she had seen melting away in the collector pods, it reminded her there was still yet more to come. She could not afford to drop her guard - to show weakness - not unless she wanted to add the names of countless more victims to the long list attributed to the coming of the Reapers. But it seemed Garrus had brought to the surface thoughts unbefitting of a commanding officer involved in matters of galactic survival. Shepard caught herself wondering: _Will there ever be a time when I can set aside my armour, set aside all the things that I must maintain to command this ship, this crew, to save lives, to remain competent in battle?_ So she painfully reminded herself of the moment the call came in to hit the Omega Relay... EDI's voice, calling her back to a role and a life and a person she had, in that moment, no longer been. She forced herself to ashamedly recall how she had felt for a single, brief, paralysing moment: terrible panic, indecision, and fear.

_I just can't do it. I can't risk __losing__ myself like that again._ She shook her head and blinked. Her expression went hard as stone, and cold settled into her bones. _I __won't__ do it._ Her will was strong enough to keep her resolve, blinking absently as cool calm returned to her expression, ignoring the single tear that seeped down her temple. Those tears could fall as much as her subconscious wanted them to – it didn't matter – _nothing_ was going to change her mind. She was Commander Shepard, and she had work to do.

* * *

Author note: Grunt was not easy to write. I tried...


	3. Chapter 3: Two Moons

14 March 2010

Two Moons

Disclaimer: the characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: contains some sexually implicit material. 16yrs+ readers only please. Some foul language, some violence.

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepard too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepard, so I leave those parts up to your imagination. Be warned: this chapter is a sad one!

* * *

The sun was setting on this barren world through hazy sheets of rain and stormy clouds, _same shit different day_ Shepard told herself with dark humour. She and Tali had dragged Garrus' heavy form between them into the cover of this broken-roofed derelict shell of a building. _Damn Exogeni. Least you could do for stirring up all this crap I'm here cleaning up after is to construct your goddamn buildings to last..._ Truthfully she had been a little scared. He'd taken a pretty bad hit – the acid or whatever it was had melted through his armour and she and Tali and had just spent 10 minutes amid his protests stripping it off him before the extremely corrosive substance reached his turian hide. Thankfully his leg and hip armour was untouched. So it had been back to business for a while, keeping watch and hoping for immanent Evac.

It was a dreary world, and the rain had been torrential and unending. It had long since soaked through every possible break in their battered armour. _Damn we need some new kit after this. _The concrete grey of the building had mottled patches where something _bigger _than what they had so far encountered had sprayed large amounts of whatever-it-was at key points of the structure to bring it down. There was decidedly less rubble than there should be, considering the damage done to the building, but suspect glassy-smooth patches on the ground hinted at the dissolving power of whatever-it-was those _things_ spewed out. Shepard figured they were _damn_ lucky to have only met the _smaller_ minions. The horde did not seem to have the intellect to execute the precise destruction of this building, and while their acid was corrosive enough to burn through armour (as proven by Garrus) it was unlikely to have been of the calibre required to do _this_ level of destruction. On the plus side of the situation at least whatever had destroyed the buildings like this one just outside the complex had long since moved on. For the time being at least, they were safe: tucked away in the rubble waiting for Evac as the rain came down.

Garrus had been unusually quiet for the past ten minutes. _Damn this world._ It shouldn't have been a difficult mission, but as usual, God had a session of bad humour at Shepard's expense and large amounts of invisible shit had hit an equally large and invisible fan, both shit and fan only becoming visible _after_ the mess had gone flying all over the place and chaos had descended upon them. Maybe he'd inhaled something into his lungs..? Maybe it had been the blow to the head. Still, he'd seemed perfectly alert enough when they started to strip his armour off him, adding some minor humour to an otherwise panic-ridden and frantic situation. She looked down on him now from her sniping position.

"No more saucy comments to offer about me and Tali undressing you?" He didn't rise to the bait. Cold settled into her stomach and she began to fret that the medigel hadn't worked, or that he had some other injury they had missed. Her heart sunk at the thought of whatever chemical it had been having seeped into a wound... _Blood poisoning? _She dreaded that. But they had checked and double checked, and the substance hadn't seemed to have gotten through that far – they'd torn his disintegrating armour off him in time. _Besides he'd have been howling by now if that stuff had touched his skin. _She was sure Chakwas would sort him out back on the Normandy anyway. When they got there. Something irrational niggled away at her nerves as she told herself that.

"Tali. Keep watch. I need to see to him."

"Should be alright for a while commander, I think those turret guns I resurrected have got them busy for a while. At least they don't seem capable of problem solving. I just hope that shuttle gets here soon." What Tali _really_ meant was _"I hope Joker or EDI picked up that brief flash of a location I coded into the comms station before it melted away."_ Else whoever came looking for them would be looking in the wrong place and finding a whole lot of nightmare. At least they could be assured that someone _would_ be looking for them by now.

Shepard kneeled next to Garrus, and was unhinged to see a glassy look in his eyes. "Hey!" she gently slapped him across the jaw, his mandibles flexed with agitation. They'd done their best to pitch him against a wall facing away from the direction of the rain that dripped onto her helmet. _He said he was just exhausted having run like hell, and just needed a rest having had a small blow to the head._ He'd waved off any fuss offered. At least it wasn't really cold rain – it was almost warm. It _had_ been pouring, but now the veil of rain could be seen to disappear in the distance and the drops fell lighter and less frequently, showing through it two purple moons on the horizon. _Wish it'd damn well clear up over __this__ way, to hell with the view._ She'd thought. _I want off this godforsaken world. _Right now though, she was looking at Garrus – the turian so stubborn that not even three bands of mercs could take him out on Omega.

He stared up at her with half-lidded eyes. "Told you..." His voice was breathy "...turians don't like the cold." He managed with some effort. Shepard looked at him, looked at him until it began to dawn on her that even though to her the rain wasn't so much cold as irritating, to his species (which was undoubtedly used to hotter climes) this was probably like her being thrown naked into the arctic wastes of Earth. _Have I ever told you turians don't like the cold Shepard?_ Words spoken by Garrus, long ago echoed in her thoughts. She removed a gauntlet and an inner glove to rest her hand on his forehead – it was stone cold.

"Do turians suffer hyperthermia?" She anxiously yelled at Tali, unsure as to whether or not Garrus would be giving her an answer any time soon. _I'm no damn medic._

"Honestly Commander I... I don't know..." came back Tali's worried reply. She had obviously picked up that things were not good in the tone of Shepard's voice.

"Don't... like the cold..." Murmured Garrus, frowning as he looked away and his head dropped a little, his eyes heavy-lidded.

_How could I be so damn ignorant as to forget? _Shepard inwardly screamed at herself. It had been gruelling getting to their current position, and there'd not been much time to think when things were at their worst. Garrus just _had _to investigate that noise didn't he? Had to agree with her obsessive need to find someone – _anyone _– alive down here. He had to be the one to open the door to the pen of a very large number of hungry demonic _things_. He'd kept his composure – she gave him that – quickly switching weapons to spray them with fire-seeded shotgun shells as he steadily paced backwards commenting calmly "Commander I think we have a problem" knowing full well she could already see what was spilling into the corridor. They'd held a retreating line as the horde came thick and fast. They had been both glad and terrified of the fact that they were in a tight corridor with those _things_ being funnelled endlessly towards them. _Just like Omega, _he'd jested.

_Shit we're gonna run out of ammo! _Tali had yelled. They'd worked their way quickly back to somewhere with heavy doors and computer terminals (Shepard had eyes only for the doors and had trusted Tali to do what she did best). Tali had worked her magic, hacked her suit into comms, sent a message and adjusted the friend-foe targeting system of the turret guns outside while Garrus had scouted ahead through the next set of doors to ensure they had a clear way out. She hadn't liked letting him go off like that at the time, but someone had to check else they'd have needed to think about navigating the airducts or finding a secure place to hide (not that the latter had seemed at all a likely prospect). When the horde forced its way through the door it had been sudden. Tali had only just finished when she moved out of the way of a spray of acid headed in her direction. _Great. So that's what they do when they get close enough_. Shepard had thought to herself at the time,_ and there was me thinking that being clawed to death was a decent way to go. _They'd had just enough milliseconds to both realise the acid had rendered the consoles un-usable before turning to run like hell towards wherever Garrus had gone - praying he'd found a clear way out.

When his voice pierced the howling of the creatures following them to reach her ears through their team intercom channel she was so damn glad to hear it. They wound the corridors following his instructions – _Does that bastard have a photographic memory or something?_ – she vaguely remembered thinking, as they swerved and darted in new directions to his command. Their lives depended on his instructions. "Left, left again! Through the double doors past the dead plants!" She'd sworn at one point he was leading them down the wrong way or they'd somehow made a wrong turning – _what fucking dead plants? _ She nearly swore at him. Until she'd realised what he was doing – leading them to an exit on the other side of the building.

She recalled how hard upon instructions to turn down what might be their last corridor he'd yelled into their ears: "Now both of you keep your damned asses pinned to that wall on your right as you hit the foyer and you run in a damned straight line you hear me? Straight to the broken glass door and DO NOT LOOK BACK!" He yelled into their ears through the intercom, growling enough that they both knew to do exactly as he instructed because there was obviously a terrifyingly good reason for doing so. They hit that long straight corridor still sprinting, and shots began to whizz past just to the left and barely over their heads. Over their shoulders the piercing screams following the impact of each bullet could be heard louder than the scrabbling of their feet (and claws of whatever chased them) on the floor tiles. That put the wind up them both – the creatures sounded a lot closer than they had realised – _must of been gaining on us the whole time._ Shepard thought to herself as she wondered if they were going to make it. That's about when she and Tali both worked out what Garrus had been up to: _he's set up a damned killing zone... Just like on Omega..._

Reaching the foyer with lactic acid building painfully in her muscles from having run too fast for too long, she and Tali kept going as fast as they could - not wanting to look back towards the sound of the horde spreading out and gaining ground behind them. Shepard couldn't entirely remember the next moments, only that something rather much bigger than a sniper rifle shot had zoomed past her head, there was an incredibly loud explosion behind her seconds later, just as she and Tali got out through the shattered door. Next she knew they were both lifting themselves from the floor to their hands and knees totally deaf. _Get the hell up and run! _Something, someone had told her, and she did, pulling Tali up. More shots rang out, reminding them both to run in a straight line towards the gently cresting hill of the road heading out of the complex. _Damned fucking hills! Why is there ALWAYS a damned hill! _Shepard thought. They kept going, she and Tali, neither stopping to look back to see what (if anything) was following them. Too scared and bent on survival to stop before reaching the other side of the turret guns. The rain was heavy and muddy torrents streamed down the road before them. Shepard spotted Garrus then – just the slightest glint of blue armour – and she was so relieved. She ran through the pain, determined to keep on going. _Just gotta reach that ridge..._

She remembered turning just as she passed his position. Garrus had swung his shot gun to bare in her direction as he leapt from the empty shell of an upside down old Mako-class transport and was firing shots and walking briskly backwards as She and Tali barely managed to cover the same distance at a flagging jog. His gun jammed, and Shepard recalled how in that moment she had thought he'd gone stark raving mad as he'd unhitched his sniper rifle and swung the butt of it towards her head, eyes wild and roaring with battle-rage. Shepard ducked and the heavy hilt thwacked into something that screeched upon impact. She spun and stumbled backwards reaching for a weapon as she watched him duck and dodge a spray of acid. Gracefully sweeping a kick he took the horror's legs from under it and he followed its fall with his gauntlet implanted through the creature's head.

"Garrus no! The acid!" she yelled – but it was too late. He swore as he pulled his hand from the corpse – the armour beginning to smoke and hiss as the creature's secretions ate through the paint. He stumbled backwards and Shepard saw another apparition on the verge of being close enough to spray him. She launched herself towards it, tracking as it tracked her, altering whom it was targeting from him to her as she grabbed at an appendage and swung the creature about – angular momentum ensured none of its corrosive spray hit her as she unholstered her pistol and shot it anywhere and everywhere that seemed effective.

When she let go of the corpse and swung around Garrus had pulled off his glove and was now grappling one armed with another of them, keeping his head clear of its poisonous regurgitations as he grabbed a hold on the creature. She thought he'd rendered it incapable of spray as it choked and sputtered, but what she was actually watching was the legacy of an attempt simply to redirect the creature's corrosive spray away from _her_. Tali was yelling something and still firing. The creature twisted loose and coated his chest plate with the corrosive substance at point blank range. "Shepard RUN!" He'd yelled at her as she had momentarily stood stunned, ears still ringing from the explosion minutes earlier. _Run _because of what he could see pouring out of the building – the blast had only stemmed the tide. Coughing and holding his head as he turned, he followed their retreat towards the target range of the turret guns at a run. They each paced to sprint when they heard the noise behind them closing in. They reached the safe line, blasts being heard behind them but they did _not_ stop until they reached the edge of a small building – each terribly out of breath.

Garrus cursed loud and coughed as crackling hissing noises could be heard coming from his direction, he stumbled back holding the back of his head again. He lost his footing, twisted and landed his head against the wall as he fell to his knees. That was when Shepard had yelled at Tali to "Nevermind those damned things help me get that armour off him before it eats all the way through!" Could be that he'd breathed some of it in. No knowing what was actually in the crap those things spewed out besides the corrosive agent... Disease? Toxin? Spores? Getting him into cover and getting that armour off him had been the most important thing at the time.

That was maybe twenty minutes ago now. So now here they were, bunkered down in that shell of a building, uncomfortably near the turret's firing zone. However the turrets had at least eradicated all of the horde that had tried to follow them, to the point where both Shepard and Tali suspected the creatures had no more idea where she and the others were now than before they had arrived. Amazing how in just a few moments she had recalled all of it, the whole _wonderful_ adventure. At least some of it had been useful – remembering the most effective place to shoot an enemy is _always_ useful. _But damn it I should have checked on him sooner_. He'd coughed for about five minutes, but it seemed like he'd cleared out his lungs after a time. Since then he had only coughed occasionally and nowhere near as violently as he had done at first.

Water dripped down Garrus' fringe and over his brows down to his mandibles – his helmet lay somewhere over there by the wall, and by now it was half-disintegrated. His black skin-tight polo-necked vest was soaked through when she reached down and touched his shoulder, which was also cooler than her hand. "Shit." She swore at herself, at the elements, just on general principles. "Don't you do this to me Garrus."

"Some damned mission _this_ turned out to be..." He muttered quietly.

Shepard tapped the radio intercom in her helmet to speak to Tali, who had positioned herself in an alcove, keeping an eye on the road. "Tali I've got to get him warm, or keep him from getting any colder if I can. Do you think you can keep watch 'til rescue arrives? I won't be able to do much if they get close. I'm going to have to strip my armour off and hope I can use my own body heat." _Of course..._ Shepard thought to herself: _not it matters: even our armour is no more than a one-time protection against those things..._ She looked up at what should have been a ceiling and not sky, "Damn this building for not even having a bastard roof..."

"No problem here commander. I'll give you a heads-up if they breach the perimeter."

Shepard jigged up and down for a moment, trying to make sure her blood was circulating, removed her helmet and then began unclipping her armour. It was what she had learned long ago to do in such situations if there was no alternative. As she started to remove her armour Garrus observed her activity lazily with renewed interest – a little life returned to his expression as she caught it, and almost wanted to throttle him for what she knew he was thinking.

"Wow. Commander..." He murmured with a lazy turian grin across his face. She shot him half a smile, and a stern frown. Off came her other gauntlet. She had the idea that maybe she could put them onto his hands to best use their residual heat, but quickly remembered there was no way she could fit his hands (which were much larger than human hands) into her gloves. At least he'd got one gauntlet he was still wearing. She undid one of her thigh plates and did her best to use the padded side opened out to sit on next to him. She unfastened her torso piece and placed it nearby, hoping to use it as an umbrella or to cover him a little if she could. The rest of her armour she tried to keep on from the thigh down. Her own under-armour clothing quickly began to absorb the falling raindrops and the wet of the wall as she leaned her back against it, not without a wince at the coolness of the concrete. _The rain might not be cold, but sure as hell the wall is..._

"C'mere you idiot." She commanded him and he obliged, rolling onto his side so that his long body lay between her legs. His shoulder uncomfortably fitted under her arm as he propped his arm under himself so that his forearm and fingers curled around her bottom – he found the energy to stroke her there a little, bringing blood to rush to Shepard's cheeks.

"This is not... quite... How I imagined the next time I'd be given the opportunity to lie between your legs... Commander."

Shepard blushed all the more so. She was somewhat glad he wasn't wearing his helmet – the intercom would have undoubtedly picked that up. She hoped that Tali hadn't heard anything through Shepard's own helmet which she had kept cautiously within arm's reach, ready to listen for any alert. _God I hope his loose tongue isn't a sign of delirium... _She worried a little but the joke, if it was a joke, soothed her nerves. They had put that side of their relationship behind them half a year ago, or so she had kept telling herself. Still as he lay against her, her heart began to sink with guilt thinking of his words. It was a lie to say that she hadn't wanted to be with him in that way... But resolved not to risk vulnerability getting in the way of duty, she _hadn't_ invited him up to her cabin. She'd avoided the topic entirely, in fact. Not even once since the Omega Relay had she spared him any more than civil discourse, she just... couldn't give him anything more.

Looking upon him now however, she pitied how that might have made him feel... not that he ever showed it. He was never angry, never short with her, never cruel as she might have expected in retaliation for her apparent rejection of him. Strangely, if anything he seemed to understand her restraint – he'd smile, he'd jest, he get on with the job and he never _ever_ let her down... And every night she'd dream about him, dream about that one time when he had joined her, just before hitting the Omega Relay... And every morning she'd put those thoughts away, shove them out of her mind, and get on with her job. The Reapers were coming and she _had_ to focus – there was no time for romance, and she couldn't afford to risk losing her way, not now. At least that was what she had told herself every day since.

But now... _Now_ she was beginning to feel incredibly regretful as she cradled him in her arms and the dreary rain poured down over them both. She was sorry she hadn't invited him up to her cabin since then. Sorry she'd not told him just how much he _had_ got to her when he had been with her. Maybe... maybe she should at least have told him _that_ much – surely she had owed it to him? She told herself they'd been busy, it never seemed to be the right time to talk about it, and each of them had seemed resolved to wait. She was _sure_ that deep down he had known her reasons, and that he simply knew she just couldn't afford to drop her guard like _that_ again. It was just too dangerous to do so... too risky to be so vulnerable and weak when she might be called upon to be at her strongest at any moment. She thought that by keeping her distance from him she was ensuring she would always be capable and ready to deal with the next emergency. _And there is __always__ another emergency._ She thought she'd done it to be brave. But now... Now she was beginning to wonder if she'd been wrong about it all. He looked so fragile now, and she was beginning to feel like a complete coward.

He shivered violently, and his shaking nearly threw him out of her arms. _Don't let me lose him, not now. _Shepard found herself thinking to herself, to the universe, to anyone out there who could hear her pleas. _Please. I know I was a fool, I see now I wasted the time we could have – no – we __should__ have spent together, fretting about how I'd deal with it. I take it all back, just don't take him away from me now..._ She prayed. _Get us out of this together, and I swear I'll bite the bullet and find a way to make it work. _She looked out into the rain, clenched her teeth and then relaxed her jaw as she sighed. _Some fucking hero I am if I can't even save a broken heart... _Her morbid humour found opportunity to express itself.

He nuzzled against her breast and murmured. "Two moons..."

Now she was _really_ getting worried – perhaps he was getting delirious, "C'mon, Garrus, stay with me. Talk to me. Don't go getting surreal on me now." She hadn't really meant to have that harshness in her voice. But it was just what she'd be saying to any soldier. It was what she had said many times before when a soldier lay injured in her arms as she tried to keep them awake until help arrived.

"I'm not." he protested, with some semblance of the strength his voice usually had. "This place... it has two moons."

She'd forgotten about the sky, looking over through the debris across the horizon she saw the two purple moons haloed through the hazy sheets of rain. "Yeah." she shrugged, still beaming heat, not shivering herself yet despite her back being plastered against the cold wet wall. She remembered to lay her chest armour over his shoulders – at least the inside was still warm as she placed it over him. "I'd have thought the view impressive if it wasn't for all this damn rain and the wonderful _surprises_ left for us by Exogeni." she griped. It was good to think about something that pissed her off... It kept her from fretting too much when her mind could be set on imagining inventive ways in which to kill whoever orchestrated this latest Exogeni catastrophe.

"My colony... Also has two moons." Garrus proclaimed softly.

Shepard's anger evaporated. She shifted a little, shocked by the cold of long, icey fingers stroking up her waist and under her arm as he adjusted the arm that lay across her. Beneath her cool calm she was steadily brewing a stew of worry, fear, and let's face it... secret desperation to tell him all the things she _should _ have said. The kindness in his voice was making it hard to subdue. But she maintained her calm and nodded. "Uh huh," was about all she could manage, swallowing hard as she tried to keep an ear out for a break in the turret gun fire. _Even if I could get the words out, I've got to stay alert else none of us will make it. There's still Tali back there, got to get us __all__ out alive._

"Every four hundred years, they align. My home planet is arid, but it has two... massive... Cobalt blue oceans..." He huffed, "That's why I have blue streaks. I ever tell you that Shepard?" He struggled to look up at her.

"No Garrus." she smiled, and bit her lip. "You haven't." She strangled the words out of her throat as her eyes watered. He nuzzled back down. All this time had passed with everything she secretly knew he meant to her bottled up inside her, and still she was only now getting to really know anything about _him_, about where he came from. Little things, unimportant things. But they meant everything to her. She was hearing these things now. _Here. On this godforsaken world._

"There are..." He shifted a little, obviously uncomfortable "tidal waves... of course, but... when the moons are aligned... hundred meter high waves crash over the shores... they wreak havoc for miles inland." He chuckled, bringing himself to cough a little until resting he took a laboured breath. "Nowhere is safe from flood... and those waves continue for nearly a year." At least with his story-telling his voice was a little steadier, like he was drawing strength from the telling. _That or her being a mammal was a good thing for them both right now... _Shepard hoped.

"Surely they must have known that would happen before they colonised the world – so why build there?"

"Challenge." He shrugged. "Turians like to fight, to beat the odds."

He shivered again. She went back to worrying, but tried to distract herself from it. "That pick-up will be here soon, and I'm going to have to explain how exactly it is that I'm sitting here with you like this." She tried to lighten the mood. "I can just imagine their faces." What she was really thinking was _they better get here soon..._

"Apparently..." He murmured, ignoring her attempted humour, or simply having not heard her – she wasn't sure which meant the worst. He continued: "There is a legend about the two moons." It was odd to think of legends being written after a species becoming space-faring, at least legends not about infamous events, people, or places where events took place.

"Legend?" She found herself asking with momentary curiosity.

"Hah." He coughed a laugh. "You forget, some of our colonies are older than your automatic rifle." Glassy eyes stared up with a touch of familiar arrogance, which faded from his expression as quickly as it had appeared. "The legend... the story..." He blinked, seeming to forget what he was going to say.

"Tell me about the story." She prompted him. Anything to keep him talking – it soothed her nerves and kept her from thinking this could be the last time she'd ever get to hear his voice. If he could just keep talking, _he'll be alright_.

"The moons..." blue eyes reopened and piercingly stared into hers as she cradled him, "are lovers...". Blood flushed to Shepard's cheeks again with his words and the intensity of his stare. "They... can only be together every... four hundred years..." He emphasised those last words like they meant something deeply profound to him. She tried to ignore the obvious: this was a story about how he felt about her, but every word he spoke echoed within her thoughts. "They... miss each other terribly when they are apart..." he sighed mournfully. Shepard could only stare down at him like she had just been turned to stone. She couldn't even swallow, and she wasn't even sure she was still breathing. " So much so that... when they join..." His voice was soft and kind and his eyes had captured her completely, like they had that night before the Omega Relay mission, "their throws of passions are so strong... they move the oceans, which are the embodiment of their feelings towards each other..."

God it hurt. It really hurt. She couldn't escape his stare, she couldn't hide. He purred his words softly to her as he held her gaze, "When they reach the height of their passion, they pour into each other, and their souls join... The earth shakes, and the oceans are thrown helplessly over the shores." The rain was falling harder again. He looked away as water streamed down over his fringe and down his scars. _Shepard_ however... was frozen to the spot... His words echoed in overtones through her mind, smothering her every thought with the mesmerising melody. She wanted it to stop: something painful was being drawn to the surface she was being made powerless to subdue, but at the same time she yearned for every word as if her life depended on it as he continued: "For a time... the two oceans move as one – _joined_ – as they wash over the land... It is impossible to tell where one begins... and the other ends." Shepard swallowed hard, she was trying desperately hard not to cry. _Why now..?_ She silently asked herself. _Why didn't I let him in? _she asked the universe, trying to find some anger to steel herself against the overwhelming sadness welling up inside.

"Only once in my life have I _ever_ felt as helpless as those oceans... as they were thrown against the shores. Only once have I_ ever _felt like I couldn't tell where _my_ soul began, and another ended." He looked back up to her again with brave sorrow. He brought up his hand to stroke her cheek as drips of water flowed through her hair and down her frozen face as she bit against her lip. "And that was..." he coughed, but frowned with determination as he kept her gaze, "It was... when I was with _you_... I stared into your eyes, and... I _knew_... you were _with_ me." He smiled to her gently, seeing the pain etched across her face. He hadn't wanted to see her like that again, hadn't wanted that to be his final memory... but he _had_ to tell her. He watched mournfully as water began to flow from her eyes now as well... Streams of it. But it was important – he hung onto that fact. Shepard stroked down his temple, and over his mandible, her hand trembling as she did so.

"Garrus..." She began to weep... "Garrus I'm so... _so_... sorry..." She only managed to whisper. She could barely breathe. Tenderly she pressed a thumb to the bridge of his nose and stroked her fingers back over his head and between the fronds, daring to remember then the intimacy they had shared just that once. She was sure that gesture had meant something... He let go this long, soft purr, as if some heavy burden had just been lifted from his shoulders. She had forgotten how much she had loved hearing that sound the first time she had heard him make it. Here as he lay against her, she knew he was remembering that time as well.

"I just..." He hugged against her as best he could, although his strength was fading, "I just wanted... you to know."

"Thank you..." She whispered. "Thank you..."The sound of her snuffling lost in the sound of falling rain, "Garrus... _please_ stay with me..."

"Always...." He murmured softly to her, "_always_ with you..." and closed his eyes.

Her heart stopped. She could feel him going limp in her arms. "No..." She whimpered softly... "Please don't _leave_ me, Garrus..?" She sobbed, "Garrus? Oh no..." She shook her head, and droplets of water sprinkled down from her hair. "Please no you – you can't... not yet!" She hugged him hard against her. "Damn it I love you!" His arm fell to the floor with the shaking of her chest as she sobbed. But he didn't respond. Her eyes wide in terror, she threw her head back and _howled_. She yelled into the sky, to God, the universe. "PLEASE DON'T TAKE HIM FROM ME!" She squeezed him against her, rocking his cold body as she began shivering herself. The light was fading, and even the rain seemed to grow cold. "DON'T!" She begged with all her heart. "PLEASE!" She cried desperately into the star-spotted grey sky.

Tali came running when she heard the sounds, shotgun in hand. _Breach in defences? No._ When she saw what was actually happening, that the awful screams she was hearing were not from any of those creatures but from _Shepard..._ Tali could not speak. She couldn't even move. She'd _never_ seen Shepard like this – never – it was... truly... horrifying... Tali wanted to fall over. She felt sick. She hadn't felt this ready to throw up since holding her father's corpse in her arms...

The hum of thrusters filtered through her suit, but still she couldn't move. _But he hadn't been __that__ bad_... she thought to herself. He must not have said anything, knowing that nothing could be done until they got back to the Normandy. Oh _Keela_ how Shepard howled... The strongest person Tali had ever known – the hero, the steadfast woman with indomitable will who no matter the situation _always _kept thinking – had deteriorated... into _this_. Just watching her rocking Garrus' lifeless body in her arms broke Tali in ways she couldn't describe and the noise... the _noise_ Shepard made as she did so ripped through Tali's nerves like a varren's teeth through bare flesh. She couldn't move. Footfalls came behind her, voices, still she couldn't move. She just fell to her knees, shotgun falling limply from her hands.

* * *

Author note: If you are feeling miserable now, don't despair. Remember... Death is not always 'the end': Sometimes... it is a beginning.


	4. Chapter 4: Angels and Demons

20 March 2010

Angels and Demons

Disclaimer: the characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: contains some sexually implicit material and some strong language. 16yrs+ readers only please.

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepard too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepard, so I leave those parts up to your imagination.

* * *

Shepard had lost all track of time. _Have I been like this forever?_ Was it hours or was it days? Weeks? Maybe even months or years? It _felt_ like forever she'd been in this state of not being anywhere at all: where memory and reality and dream dissolved... mixing and disintegrating who she was, her purpose, and any meaning to her existence. There was pain. There was _always_ pain... heart-wrenching misery that manifested itself as actual, physical pain. Maybe it was all simply in her mind – that physical aching and nausea. Was _she_ in her mind? Loss. That was her only constant. _He_ was gone. They'd had to drag his body away from her... down on that godforsaken planet.

Again the vision spun and the scene replayed: this was the root of her pain. She thought she had forgotten it for a moment, not knowing who she was or where she was... It was easier when she could be 'nothing', but the truth always came back to her, persistent, like a demon tormenting her soul with excuses like "they need you" and "you still have things to do". But it was all lies – there was never an end to her nightmares, there was never any task with which to occupy herself, and even though slipping away into nothingness was so much preferred over remembering who she was and what had happened, the truth always forced her back into this nightmare. _Always._ 'Always' had been the last word Garrus had spoken to her and it haunted her as she tossed and turned and occasionally screamed, reliving the despair and regret as she watched him slip away from her over, and over, and over...

Dr. Chakwas quietly observed the anguish etched on the sleeping woman's face. It was almost a permanent feature of Shepard's expression as of late. She watched over this once proud, brave, and earnestly robust woman who had seen countless soldiers fall, and had even lived with the consequences of choices that had led to close friends being taken away from her... by her _own_ hand no less. Chakwas knew from firsthand experience Shepard was so steadfast in her beliefs that she would die just to save one life. She had died to save Joker's. _This_ woman had even dealt with _her own __death__..._ And after two _years_ of 'non-existence' as she was painstakingly rebuild by Miranda's Cerberus science team, after the parting of all Shepard was familiar with and waking up to find herself allied with sworn enemies... this woman had _still_ managed to pull herself together, stay sane, and find her feet to stand solid as a rock before the impending storm of galactic annihilation. _Why..?_ Because she was the only one who _could_. Her resolve and skill had given pause for thought to any opponent, _including_ the Reapers – an age-old menace who had efficiently exterminated all sentient life from the galaxy over and over again in a cycle going back billions of years. For such beings to be afraid of one human woman, she really had to be special. Some people had even thought her a god, including, at times as she would admit, Chakwas herself. Shepard was immortal, invulnerable, the hero that could not be sundered... or so they had thought.

Solemnly she watched over this woman, who now lay sedated in the quietest corner of her infirmary. Sedated... because she had apparently, finally, been pushed too far. Dr Chakwas _had_ considered a most terrible alternative upon seeing the penultimate fate of this legendary woman. In memory and honour of what the woman had once been, she _had_ considered it: she'd considered pressing that button right _there_. The woman's mental unrest was such that there was a precarious balancing act being performed right now, between keeping her dosed up with enough drugs to knock her out but just short of enough to kill her. _One press of that button_, just up the dose by one, tiny digit, and the woman's nightmare would be over.

Chakwas had abstained of course – she was a doctor, and being strong enough _not_ to press that button was what she had always been moulded to do, a rule for which she had been trained under the strictest conditions to abide. But she _had_ thought about it. She felt incredibly guilty for having thought about it, but she _had _thought about it. Shepard had no family to confer with. Her family was the crew, the ship, the soldiers she took up arms with. It was the same for her friends, and too few of them had stayed by her side upon her renewal. Thinking about it all, Chakwas was even more amazed by the woman. _How can a person be so righteous, give so much to save a galaxy, when she doesn't even have anyone close to her to spur her drive to protect? What had made this woman what she had been? Had she just been born to do the amazing things she had accomplished?_ Then with a sinking feeling as Chakwas looked upon the woman's pained, sleeping face: born to become, ultimately... _this_? The transformation, the change, was almost too frightening to contemplate, for if Shepard could fall then surely... _so would they all_.

Chakwas' pager vibrated on its lowest setting in her pocket: she was being summoned elsewhere. Watching the woman frown and flinch as she turned to go, she quietly sighed – very quietly for necessity – the woman had proven to be very susceptible to rousing from only the slightest stimulus. She did not want to have to call for Grunt again. However, she was glad to see the asari she had come to rely upon already stood ready in the doorway as she paced in that direction. With a nod they exchanged duties, and she was comforted by the serenity in the expression of this ancient, blue-skinned being. _I will steady her mind as best I can, and share her pain. I will give my strength to her as she faces her demons._ That was what Samara had calmly said the first time she had come to the infirmary amidst the chaos of broken equipment, screaming, and Grunt forcibly holding Shepard to the bed as Chakwas herself clutched two broken fingers. With a flush of blue aura and a flash of white light from her eyes Samara had pressed her hand to Shepard's forehead, and the woman had been stilled. Samara was the _only_ other person on the ship Chakwas would let keep watch over Shepard, much to Tali's sorrowful discontent. Relieved that she had not had to summon the asari before leaving, Chakwas exchanged a grateful smile with the Samara, and left to go and deal with whatever-it-was she was needed for elsewhere.

* * *

Shepard did not recall that they'd actually had to knock her out to get her into the shuttle quickly before the turret guns had been overwhelmed. Nor did she know that they'd had to keep her dosed up and out cold in the med bay to stop her from going completely berserk. Nor would she now care for the diagnosis being mused over for the medical reports: clinical insanity. In her current condition, _nothing_ really mattered to her anymore, and that was not likely to change unless a certain person were to be brought back from the dead... It seemed nobody dared speak to in her the brief moments she had seemed to come to. Perhaps nobody wanted to see her like this. Not even Chakwas was there – just a beep each time she started to come round as her pulse rate quickened, bringing forth a stream of something into her veins and then she was back out for the count. Sometimes she thought she felt someone there – a comforting presence within her dreams, and those were the only times when all else faded to black and fleetingly she felt warm and safe. The sensation was always temporary however, as memory won out in the end, and comfort was something she denied herself. Then, she would be forced to relive nightmare after nightmare of her life, all its failings, but _worst_ of all was the regret.

Shepard had never _truly _regretted anything in her life, because regret was something _other_ people felt in recompense for actions those people had known _should_ be done and _could_ be done by their own hands, and yet were left undone. _That_ had never been a crime for which Shepard was guilty. She had always acted...Never erred, never _ignored_ what must be done even when it was painfully obvious there could _be_ no ideal outcome. She had 'regretted' the loss of life, and having no choice but to deprive a family of a loved one... Like depriving Ash's sisters of Ash as she made the choice to leave the brave soldier on Virmire to die. But it wasn't 'regret' in the same sense as everyone else would understand. She did not drive herself mad with impossible alternative outcomes. She could be saddened... She could be angered... especially when out of all the choices she was presented with, the universe had somehow deprived her of any chance of a happy ending.

However, that had all changed since hitting the collector base. Shepard had not known regret... Until Garrus had brought out in her something so fragile she couldn't cope with it... Until when faced with that vulnerability she had not embraced it or tried to come to terms with it, she had instead simply walked away from it and _ignored_ it. Except that wasn't true, now was it? No... she hadn't just walked away from it: she'd _run_. Shepard never considered herself a coward until Garrus had lay dying in her arms, and then, only then had she realised just what she had done, or rather... what she had _not_ done. Then she'd known regret_. _The pendulum swung from anger to misery, to anger to misery, and she punished herself with images of his last moments.

Something brought her away from the cycle – noise, light, something that seemed to draw her from one reality to another. Sometimes her mind did this to her, like lurching into a different tune at the hands of an incompetent DJ - briefly confusing, quickly annoying. When finally Shepard awoke, she barely knew she wasn't still dreaming, but with no stream of drugs flooded her veins to knock her out, she felt sick. Sick enough to hurl her stomach up. Death would be better than this she was sure – whatever _this_ was.

A shadow loomed over her and the change in light forced her eyes open on a world familiar and yet not right. Her eyes blurred at first as she tried to pick out familiar bulkheads and colours – she was definitely in Med bay in this reality. It wasn't raining. It _had_ been raining where she had just been – was that memory or dream, or was it just that this was a more intense dream than the last? She couldn't be sure of anything anymore. Looking towards the door, she saw several recognisable faces. Right now she cared for none of them. All she wanted was this endless nightmare to be over. Every time she closed her eyes she held Garrus in her arms, dying or dead. It was the same dream over and over again.

Tali was at the foot of the bed with Chakwas next to her. Shifting her eyes to focus slightly further back she could see Grunt slouching his back against the wall with his arms folded. Jacob leaned in the doorway, and Jack propped herself up on the arm of a nearby chair, upon which sat Miranda. She _had_ to be hallucinating for those pair to be sitting within five feet of each other and not trying to kill each other. The whole thing was surreal – hell even Joker was there: she heard the characteristic sound of him clearing his throat, and Kelly too... _How many people can you fit into Medbay? Have they all gone mad? Or am I... _Shepard had a sinking feeling. _Am I dead...? Are we all dead? Jeez I didn't think it could get any worse. Did the ship try to land and got blown up by one of the larger attractions of Exogeni's little amusement park? _She had thought she'd seen that, at some point past, experienced seeing the Normandy blown to smithereens as a giant monster reached up and plucked it from the stars. But then there had been Collectors, and suddenly she had been out in the cold of space and suffocating to death. Then she'd been back on that planet with two moons and never ending rain and... now she was here in Med Bay with faces all around. _You know what? I don't care anymore._ She thought to herself._ Screw the universe. Kaidan screwed me. The Collectors screwed me. The council screwed me. Cerberus __brought me back to life__ and screwed me. Push someone hard enough and they break. Well congratulations to you, you broke me. Let's get this over and done with shall we?_

Gardner was somewhere behind her – she swore she could smell his aftershave and hear his voice._ Is she gonna be alright?_ She heard someone ask – Scottish accent. Not dead then? If she wasn't dead she still wasn't 'alright'. Very _not_ alright, especially the moment she again recalled what had happened after the rain, what kept happening after the rain – her nightmare. Anything _but_ alright. _I could have been with him for the time he had left, but I just wasted it. I wasted it. He'd needed me and I failed him. And then, I got him killed. I guess I deserve this, this madness. I deserve it because I'm too damn WEAK! _Anger again began burning through her veins, boiling under her skin and behind her eyeballs. Worried faces looked down on her. She could hear Mordin muttering a rapid long stream of something. She _was _weak. Very weak, too weak in fact to maintain the anger. Her weakness was so real she wondered if bizarre as it was this all really _was _real... Not that it mattered. She just wanted them all to go away.

Shepard was about to fade back into the darkness when she caught the sudden movement of Jacob shifting from the doorway, instantly putting her senses on alert. Thane appeared and waltzed in, gracefully pacing forwards and took her hand with a solemn expression. She would have pulled her hand away had she the strength but instead found herself disorientated by the movement and nauseous to boot. She could only lie there. She couldn't even muster a sarcastic comment or a curse about them all being there. Then she just felt lost, bewildered, confused by what was going on. It was only the surreal weirdness of it all that kept her distracted from entirely sinking back into dark memory _or_ throwing up her guts as she lay there, eyes darting around the room. Nothing was making any sense, and the shuffling and muttering was making her head hurt, and the smells of everything hitting her all at once was making her reel for breath.

Thane squeezed her hand tightly then sidestepped gracefully turning to face the door, bowing his head, his serene expression betrayed an almost-smile. She did not appreciate this kindness, and anything with a smile on it should really have a fist planted into it, or so she was thinking until she saw who he was looking at, standing just behind him. Her jaw dropped. She was definitely dead then. She never thought she'd see that face again. Her very own angel had come to take her away from this madness. But there was something about the way he moved, unfamiliar clothes, the_ real_ shadow he cast upon the floor... She didn't want _this_ to be a dream. If it was a dream, she didn't want to wake.

"GARRUS!" she exclaimed, tears welling in her eyes as he quickly crossed the few steps between them and took her hand, with an expression of deadly seriousness and relief in his eyes. She sat bolt upright and was swiftly in his arms, and he hugged her _so_ hard... So tightly she forgot the audience as the room erupted with cheers and joyous laughter. "Garrus..." She wept and wept and wept. She was overjoyed and yet so pained by the relief to see him. It seemed like forever he held her, "Shhh... Shhh..." he whispered down into her ear, "Shhh.... It's alright now." She earnestly wanted to believe him as she clung to him. _Not letting go._ Clinging to him to the last, keeping him real.

Then the sounds of muted laughter around her and buzz of multiple conversations slowly penetrated her hearing. Sheepishly, slowly, suspiciously she looked around... now more confused by it all than she had been before. He felt real. God he felt real. She could feel the felted material of his tunic against her cheeks, she could feel the texture of the tough skin on the back of his hand, and the soft paddy skin running from his palm under his fingers as she clung to his arm and he held to hers. He still had his scars from Omega, the cybernetic plate grafted into his skull, and his eyes... His eyes were the part she felt the most assured was real: crystal blue and only for her. It took some time before she dared look away, to nuzzle down into his chest and take in the comfort. Slowly as she rested there, she began to notice her surroundings once more. If she wasn't dead, and he was alive, then... what the hell was _this_ all about? This incredibly unusual, inappropriate party? She took a breath, then raised an eyebrow. She mustered herself to say something to the onlookers.

"And what the hell are all of you gawking at..?" she managed seriously with an eyebrow raised. More laughter erupted, some of it hysterical towards which she scowled. Shepard felt a great deal of frustration but "Shhh..." came again softly from above the arms that held her, and she found she couldn't frown anymore. It was hard to regain any air of 'Commander Shepard' as it was, without him gently squeezing her and stroking her fingers. There was a moment's silence.

"Considering what you put us all through, you could be a little more grateful Commander." said Kelly with her usual charm. Jacob pointed to a pretty sore-looking black eye that Shepard hadn't until then noticed, her eyes then falling to Jack who shifted to show her right arm in a sling, then to Chakwas who sported two fingers taped together on the hand she waved briefly in Shepard's direction.

"Huh." Snuffed Grunt. "Bunch of weaklings – all of them. _I _was the only one who could hold you _down_ Shepard." Shepard suddenly felt awfully guilty, she remembered none of this. Had people been hurt getting them offword? _Wait. Hold me down..? They're all winding me up..._

"The last time someone broke my arm I tore her fucking head off. You're lucky I owed you one, _Shepard_." Jack scowled, "Next time bitch I'll fucking put you out for good." She sounded serious enough that Shepard caught the subsequent tension in the room as the others were unsure whether or not Jack meant it. Shepard at least knew that she was jesting, and was reassured of some normality: she and Jack had an understanding. But that _did_ probably mean that everything else they said might be at least partially true...

"Dare I even ask what happened?" Shepard asked, rather bravely she thought. _Better to find out now rather than have it hung over my head later, let them get it out of their systems._

"You knocked me out for about twenty seconds." Jacob frowned and crossed his arms, his expression then erupting with the largest grin she'd seen on his face since he spent a night in Miranda's quarters...

"I stayed out of your way Commander," laughed Joker, "I'm not dumb."

Chakwas raised a hand to still the conversation. "Really Commander the rest of the injuries were minor, and mainly thanks not to you but just ordinary combat damage." Said Chakwas.

"_Minor_ damage?" Voiced Jack, scowling intently at Chakwas. Shepard stifled a laugh and smirked instead. It was hard not to be lifted by it all, even mortally embarrassed as she was.

"And _your_ fingers..?" Shepard directed her question to Chakwas as she rested her head against Garrus chest as she bit her lip. He was definitely not helping her regain her usual commanding stature by curling his fingers through her hair.

"Well. You came to and you were not very happy about it so I tried to sedate you, which you also apparently disagreed with." Muted giggles erupted around the room, and Chakwas squeezed her eyes into a piercing glare at each of them until they fell quiet.

"Jeez I'm so... _so_ sorry... All of you..." Shepard lifted her hand to her mouth, mortally wounded by her own embarrassment. She would have tried then to get herself back some dignity and seriousness, had it not been for the talons that now caressed her cheek, making her look up. She felt even more exposed now than before – such an open display of affection would have been swatted away with a stern reprimand had she not been so overwhelmed by the joy just to see Garrus alive, and to have him hold her as she stared up into those beautiful, stunningly blue eyes. Another tear threatened to escape down her cheek.

"It was _worth_ it." Tali volunteered sweetly, "To see the look on your face when _he_ walked in." nodding towards Garrus. Others seemed to nod in agreement to that. There was a brief hush, and Shepard felt awkwardly closer to each of those faces for that moment, sensing the sincere kindness in the caring expressions that each gave her. She was also taken aback by the number of faces she saw. She was sure half the ship was here. Samara perched silently in a corner – Shepard now realised it was _she_ who had been the shadow that first awoke her. Even Legion was there observing it all, probably no less confused than Shepard. She was going to get giddy on all this outward display of emotion.

"Time out everyone. You can all see the Commander later." Declared Chakwas firmly. At least _somebody_ had the mercy to allow Shepard to recompose her dignity a little. "Right now," and Chakwas didn't quite manage to hold back that slight smirk as she spoke: "she needs _rest_." _Someone _ in the room made some quiet jest that made everyone jeer and howl with laughter – Shepard could guess what _that_ had been about. _Joker. It had to be Joker._ She'd have words with him later... Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she buried her head in her hand. _Please no more..._ She cringed. But thankfully the voice of mercy stilled the laughter as Chakwas reprimanded them all and sent them on their way: "Go on now, all of you. Out!"

Having shooed the last one out of the door Chakwas walked back to place a hand at the foot of Shepard's bed. "It's not that bad really." She tried to reassure her, "Sure... it's not like we're _used_ to seeing you like that," She said after checking over her shoulder that everyone was out and had stayed out, "But honesty Commander I think in some ways it's been a relief for everyone to see that you are indeed human and mortal like the rest of us." She smirked, "You might say it's been a bit of a kick up the arse too. We're _so_ used to relying on you, expecting you to never falter. You're a damned hero Shepard!" she motioned her arms dramatically.

Shepard lifted her head long enough to shoot the woman a gorgan's glare before dropping her head to her hands again, clasping the bridge of her nose and shaking her head. Chakwas dropped her arms and continued, quietly and far more solemnly: "If you were immortal, if you were a God, then that's a pretty good excuse _not_ to aspire to be as unrelenting, as tough, as smart, _or_ as heroic as you. But if deep down you're really just as mortal as the rest of us, then _that's_ a challenge we have no excuse for ignoring." Shepard felt Garrus' arms momentarily squeeze her to that. It was a sentiment he echoed.

Chakwas smiled, "I think a lot of people only just realised that _really_, what _you _do is simply show us is what we each _could_ be capable of if only we dare try for it as hard as you do." Shepard just shook her head in her hands, and spared a sad smile to the doctor, which was as much as she could give in thanks for such flattery. Chakwas rested a hand upon her shoulder. "Now, I recommend rest. But you can do that as easily in your cabin as in here. Besides..." She smirked, "I'm sure the two of you two have a lot to talk about." The hand slipped from her shoulder, and she departed. Chakwas had wanted to tell Shepard that there was _one_ person whom she thought could honestly claim to already know all of that... someone who knew that Shepard was a mortal example to live up to, and who knew just how amazing _that_ made her and everything she did... But Chakwas hoped that Shepard already knew who that was.

Only Garrus remained in Med bay with her now. So everybody, absolutely _everybody_ knew about her and Garrus now? It wasn't that she particularly cared what other people thought of a human-turian relationship, but she hadn't really intended to have it broadcasted. It was rather a lot to take in. _D__id I really do all those injuries? I must have really been out of it..._ Shepard certainly remembered being mad, so angry she could not contain it. She again remembered Garrus lying limply in her arms and her heart skipped a beat in the recalling. His hand squeezed around her shoulder, reassuring her and bringing her back to here and now. Her heart skipped again when she felt herself being lifted off the bed and gravity shifting in direction. The world was swinging until she brought her head up. Beautiful blue eyes stared down at her. "She's right you know." He spoke softly, that wonderful, purring voice she had never thought to be graced with the sound of again, "There _are_ some things I think we should talk about..."

Still stunned by it all but too relieved to care she simply rested her hand around the back of his neck and allowed her head to slump against her shoulder as the door whooshed open and he carried her out of Med bay. Suddenly self conscious she opened her eyes, but there was nobody to be seen, and only the quiet hum of the engines to be heard. _Chakwas!_ She frowned. That woman must have cleared the entire deck between there and the lift. _And this conniving man carrying me was probably in on it too._ She squeezed her eyes in his direction, half scowling. He simply flashed a turian grin and continued carrying her.

"What about the mission?" She asked abruptly – suddenly remembering the horrors that existed down there on that blasted planet, and thinking of work to be done, responsibilities to be looked after. All the things she could not shirk now that she was awake.

"Taken care of."

"What?" She squeezed his collarbone through the material of his tunic as she tried to sit up, making him flinch.

"Hey! Careful! We turians aren't armoured all over, you know." He reprimanded her with a raised brow and a mischievous smirk as he swung her around the corner into the lift and pressed the button for her cabin.

"Sorry..." She murmured, wincing sympathetically as she apologised. Settling against him then for a moment she listened to the low hum of the lift working... until she found something else to worry about. "What's the ship's status?"

EDI's voice quickly answered her request "Minor repairs were necessary after low altitude assault was -"

"_EDI we spoke about this." _Garrus growled at the ship's AI.

"Sorry Commander Shepard. Mr Vakarian has asked that I not brief you on mission details, however I _h_ave been instructed to tell you that the mission was a success, all crew are accounted for and fit for duty, Officer Lawson and Jack are sharing command shifts with Jacob and Samara for the next 48hrs, and the ship is functioning as per optimal parameters. Do you wish to override Mr Vakarian's request to gain access to a more detailed summary?"

_Miranda and Jack... sharing command shifts? _No, no. There was already way too much to take in and Shepard would far rather remain oblivious of it all, at least for a while. "No EDI, it's alright. Thank you."

"It is good to have you back Commander. Logging you out."

The lift doors opened. A few steps and they were at the door to her quarters. Shepard feebly reached for the lock pad to key in the code but a turian hand was already there. The door swished open and then they were through the door to her quarters, Garrus setting her down gently on the bed. _How did he know I hadn't changed the code..?_

"Now... Where _were_ we..?" He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and back to her as he sat beside her. "Suddenly, I can't remember." He said sarcastically, mischievously shaking his head as she looked at him puzzled.

"Had I already told you that you're the most amazing woman I've ever met, and that being in your quarters again is all I've thought about _every_ night of _every_ week of _every_ month that has passed since the first time you invited me here?" He said these things so completely matter-of-fact as he stared into her eyes, watching with amusement as the words filtered into her muzzy brain. He looked away and shook his head before turning back to meet her eyes, mandibles a-twitch in mischief and being pleased with himself as he watched the emergence of her beautiful smile. _Everything_ about her was beautiful. He realised that now. Damn he knew that all too well now. But still he tried to keep his concentration to the task at hand.

"From the look on your face I'm guessing I must've missed something... Hmmm..." He reached for her hand, and placed it over his left mandible, hoping she wouldn't notice how much his hand was shaking as he did so. "Did I tell you already," nuzzling into her palm as he continued to hold her gaze as he spoke, swallowing against his nerves, "... that I love you more than _anything else _in this whole damned galaxy, and that I want to spend the rest of my days figuring out _exactly_ what it takes to keep you smiling – I mean the way you are right now?" He raised a brow in query, "I tell you any of that that already, by any chance?" he asked her flatly. Only his eyes betrayed him... They desperately searched hers for signs of reassurance and encouragement.

"Garrus..." She could also see something _else_ in those eyes, hiding behind the hope of acceptance, something hot... and _wanting_. She blushed, giddy as a schoolgirl as her mind ran through the blatantly long list of adoration she had just received... And even though she'd protest it: she was loving every minute of it. She could feel she'd got this smile brimming from ear to ear now in spite of herself, which was making it really hard to speak because her cheeks were beginning to ache. "I think you already figured out the latter during the last time you were here in my cabin." She frowned, smirking humorously.

"Oh I'm _sure_ there's more to learn. There always is with _you_." He steadily began to undo his tunic, shrugging it from his shoulders, making Shepard flush hot and cold with the sight of taut muscles and bare ruddy brown hide and grey plating. "Oh and there was one other thing..." he pronounced as he tossed the tunic aside with a measure of arrogance. Little did she know how nervous he was, and how relieved he was that he didn't fling that item of clothing halfway across the room and onto something breakable.

"Oh?" She pulled a worried smile – _There could possibly be more..?_

"Yeah." He slowly lifted her hand again to nuzzle it, affectionately pushing into her palm as she wriggled free to stroke her fingers down from his temple under his jaw to his throat, prompting him to lose his words as he growled low and deep. Gods and spirits how he'd missed her, how he _wanted_ her... Her touch left him unable to think before speaking as he found himself nervously whispering to her, "I... I should have figured all of that out long, long ago... and I _should_ have told you it sooner." He signed mournfully closing his eyes as she drew her fingers deftly around the inner rim of his collarbone, eliciting from him lustful moan that made her tingle all over.

"You've won me over already, you know..." She whispered, prompting his eyes to open to see her duck her head and look up at him in that condescending predatory way she would sometimes have – normally just before punching whoever-it-was she was interrogating in the stomach. Her use of it here and now made him laugh out loud, and quickly he found his nerves eased.

"Well actually that wasn't really what I meant to say anyhow..." He chuckled – _so_ glad to have this moment with her, to be allowed to be with her again. "I mean, I wanted to say that too I guess, but there _was_ something else..." He sunk his head and shook it, getting peeved with how he'd managed to break up a perfectly smooth chain of sentences he'd been practicing ever since he woke up in life-support and Thane had told him what had been going on. He sighed. He was clumsy with words. He knew this. Still it was a kick in the mandibles to have done so well only to falter here. But she just lifted his chin with a single finger and grinned at him. He fumbled for his words.

"What I was trying to say, was," He swallowed. Her eyes... _Damn_ she could turn him to hanar jelly with those eyes... "that all that time passed and I never said a word about any of this because I just didn't want to watch you to turn from steel into..." _Great. I love my tongue. _"erm..." _I love my rifle better. At least with that all I have to do is point and shoot_. "...honey, only to see you be forced to turn to steel again. I saw how much that hurt you the first time, and I just... couldn't..." She pressed a finger to his lips.

"I know. It's OK. Garrus I was a coward." He pulled his head back and frowned in anger, about to heartily dispute such a ridiculous suggestion when she again pressed her finger to his mouth to silence his protest, and sternly repeated herself: "I _was _a coward – I didn't think I could deal with this, this... level of intimacy... and still be 'Commander Shepard, saviour of the Citadel' and all that crap." There was sorrow in her eyes now, and heartfelt regret. "I thought I was being strong by putting my thoughts of you away, but I was only hiding from myself." She lifted both her hands to stroke them down either side of his face, and he lifted his hands to hold them there as he touched his forehead to hers. Again he was reminded of just how much he'd _missed _her... She pulled back just enough to be able to shift her eyes to focus on his. "Garrus I'm done prohibiting myself from having you. What we have is too special to abandon for some later date," She smiled, "and I think we've already wasted too much time."

"Couldn't have said it better myself." He nodded as he swallowed, feeling giddy as though the floor had just fallen out from under him_. He wasn't used to things going right._ She laughed. He shook his head "No I really mean that..." He said and chuckled: she'd just saved his ass, again. And he was _so_ grateful.

"48hrs?" She smirked up at him, eyebrow raised in interest.

"48hrs." He echoed softly, sliding his fingers down her arms, pressing down lightly as he did so to prompt her to stroke her hands down from his chin and down his neck. Nothing had erased the memory of her cool smooth fingers, but reality was ever more enticing than remembering.

"Think we can catch up in that time? Bit of a challenge..." She leaned in, exposing her neck to him as she lifted one hand to slowly pull the med bay garment from one of her shoulders.

Garrus paused for thought – what he really wanted to do was tear any clothing off her and find his peace inside her... Finally considering the garment _probably_ disposable, he slipped a talon under each strap over her shoulders and easing them down, swiftly snipped clean through the material. With a sly smile she allowed the garment to fall to her waist, revealing her as he had so dreamed about seeing her again for oh... so, _so_ long. He leaned in, now holding each of her bare shoulders to gently but firmly draw her in closer. Looking forwards to sliding his fingers down her human curves he lowered his head to purr into her neck: "I'm certainly willing to try if you are."

* * *

Author note: Just a small thank you to readers for the feedback I've received. I have a science fiction story of my own I'm writing, so if ever I get the damned thing published, I'll let you know. I'm hoping if anyone will like my story it will be the people who like my fanfic for Shepard and Garrus, as it involves a human/alien romance. For the record my own story is one I've been thinking of putting down for about 12yrs now, long before I knew that there were so many people out there who seem to find that sort of thing of interest.


	5. Chapter 5: Just me and the fish

28 March 2010

Just me and the fish

Disclaimer: the characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: contains some sexually implicit material. Teenage and older readers only please.

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepard too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepard, so I leave those parts up to your imagination.

* * *

Shepard was beginning to relax – just a little. Maybe more than a little... But it was still all quite difficult to accept as real. Garrus was alive and so was she, and for the next 48hrs he was hers and he was here with her in her quarters – it almost seemed too good to be true... but turian hands traced long fingers down her naked curves, reminding her with every touch that this was truly real, meanwhile her neck was being assaulted with gentle nuzzling. Reverberating purrs were coming from her blue-eyed lover – the angel she had thought not long ago she would never get to see or touch again. She smiled: it was all oh so comforting, bringing back memories of rapture she had tried too long to forget. _Should never have tried to forget._ She told herself.

"If this is a dream, _please_ don't wake me..." she murmured.

Garrus purred and sighed. He was so very, very glad to have been given this second chance to make things between he and Shepard the way they should have been. "No dream." He purred, "Just me and the fish." He growled as her fingers caressed the softer skin under his chin and down his throat and her other hand worked to massage under his fringe... He almost couldn't believe it was actually happening either, until he replayed the words he'd just spoken and kicked himself... "_And the fish." That didn't really come out right..._ he scorned himself, but his terrible tongue at least made certain that this was indeed real – he was always more suave in his dreams about her. Regardless it was so _good_ to be this close to her... And she seemed to have either become used to his inability to construct a decent sentence when _she_ and _romance_ were involved, or she hadn't noticed. He was just beginning to allow his thoughts to slip into memories of the last time he was here with her, like this, in her quarters... when -

"Uaarrgh!" Shepard suddenly let out a growl – not a nice one. Garrus flinched and instantly stopping whatever it was he was doing in case it was him that had prompted that angry outburst. No doubt about it, this was real. Things never went right for him in reality. He looked at her, worried for a moment. She dropped her head into her hands and sighed mournfully. Garrus was very confused... _What the Hell did I __do__? It was the 'fish' comment wasn't it... I killed the mood... Great going Garrus._

"What is it?" He found himself asking, gingerly none the less for Shepard's was not a temper you wanted to see let loose.

"I..." She sniffed and huffed, "I... stink." She sneered indignantly, and loudly. Garrus hadn't quite taken that in before her next growled outburst: "And I'm _starving_..." She frowned hell's fury with her frustration, clenching her fists. _Hmm. _Chakwas _had_ warned him she might be a little prone to emotional outburst from having been on such a high dosage of drugs for a prolonged period. "_Give it about 4 hours - I've given her something that should kick in after that and ease the withdrawal symptoms a little." _She had told him. He remembered the warning with bitter disappointment. He had really wanted not to waste a single minute of the time they had been re-given. But even Chakwas' warning taken into account... this seemed to be a lot less about emotions and more about simple frustration...

_He'd_ had time for a quick shower and a change of clothes in the time it took Chakwas to get everyone prepared to wake Shepard. However, thinking about it now he had to admit: he _was_ rather hungry himself... Then the absurdity of it all struck him. Here they were, having (at least to each other) only just admitted how much they meant to one other, getting over how they'd thought they'd lost each other for good, and _now_... Having now been brought back together and given a second chance at everything, they were just too damned _hungry_ to do anything with it! Part of him was fuming with frustration, the rest of him thought it was funny. Hi mandibles twitched as he tried not to laugh at the irony of it all - he didn't think Shepard would take that too well.

"You're hungry?" He tried to sound sympathetic and patient. "Do you... maybe want to take a shower, get some food?" _drink some wine..._ He nearly jested recalling the awful opening conversation he'd had with her the first time he'd come to her cabin, but feared a violent reprimand. His humour had got him into trouble more than a few times with Tali, and a frustrated Shepard was a woman unhinged, or so he was beginning to think, especially after the next outburst:

"No!" She growled and sharply: "I want you!" She looked up and frowned at him, poking him forcibly in the chest with a bony index finger, "And!" she paused, then dropped her head into her hands again as she ashamedly admitted: "I'm hungry..."

Garrus began to chuckle.

"I don't see what's so funny about it." She scowled up at him, "I thought you were dead, I wake up to find I've got you back and a second chance to do things _right_," making grand gestures with her arms, "and now I'm _ruining_ it again... all because my stomach won't quit complaining!"

She was serious, deadly serious. Unfortunately, that just made it worse as Garrus' sense of humour got the better of him. His chuckle grew into a laugh, louder and less controllable, prompting her to thump him with an "Oii!" which only served to make him laugh all the harder. She raised her armed to swing a slap in his direction but he blocked it and instead grabbed hold of her. Swiftly he pulled her semi-naked form onto his lap as she squirmed resistance and frowned hard as she fought somewhat pointlessly against him. Once he'd got a grip on her there was no way she was getting lose. He held her hard against his chest. "Hey!" he yelled as she jostled in his lap while elbowing him, until finally she gave in and stopped struggling. He was glad he couldn't bruise the way a human would but it still stung. "Look," he purred down to angry eyes, "I'm pretty hungry myself, so how about we get something to eat, huh?" Still she scorned him with her eyes, until he added: "I promise I won't go anywhere, or do _anything_ else without you for the next 48 hrs."

She relaxed her body, slumping her shoulders and pulling a thoroughly miffed expression as she forced a half-smile. "Alright..."

Garrus _did_ pity her a little: none of this could be easy for her, and if her mind was still muzzy from the drugs then later she might later be incredibly embarrassed about her current behaviour. So he tried very hard to ignore the fact that all this half-naked squirming in his lap _had_ in fact put his appetite for food on the rear thrusters... and made him far more interested in _other_ things. After all, this was akin to the sort of play-fighting that might precursor _other _things were she a turian. Realising he was still gripping her wrists he released her, and she stood up indignantly. _Maybe it wouldn't be right to do anything while she's still recovering anyway, regardless what Chakwas might have suggested._ But seconds after she had risen to her feet it was 'Commander Shepard' that stood before him, problem-solving-thinking-on-her-feet Commander Shepard... only lacking her uniform, or indeed any clothing from the waist up... "I feel filthy, but I'm so hungry... Now I don't know which problem I should solve first..." She rubbed her eyes.

Garrus watched with intrigue the way the muscles contracted and relaxed as she breathed. He caught the fact that his eyes were wondering and resolved to contain his interest. "Alright..." he tried to concentrate on the conversation. He tried not to look over her curves as she stood now hands on hips, Med bay garment hanging loosely around her hips, looking around the room in obvious annoyance. _Great._ He thought to himself. _From now on whenever she stands in that posture on the command deck I'm going to get __this__ image in my head. That's going to do wonders to my concentration..._ "Well, maybe I could fetch us both some food? You could go shower, and then... we could take our time and uh, get in the mood for something else..." He suggested tentatively, again kicking himself for his lack of eloquence with words. _In any case __I'm__ the one that needs the shower... a __cold__ one._ He didn't really mean to imply he expected anything else from her – there were things he wanted but he didn't want to pressure her, he was just trying to be diplomatic with her feelings. Still, the prospect that _other_ things may well happen in the next few hours – and he _really_ wanted them to – was getting to his nerves. He couldn't help but feel just a little excited, although he then felt guilty for thinking about those sorts of things at such an inappropriate time. _Nothing is going to happen while she's in this state._ He vowed._ Hugs, reassurance, looking after her – sure no problem. But I will __not__ take advantage of her vulnerability._ Thankfully Shepard remained oblivious to his musings as she stared off into a bulkhead.

"Yeah... I guess that'll just have to do." She sighed, doubly annoyed that she pillaged the last of her room's secret stash of snacks just the night before going on that dreadful mission to Exogeni's latest disastrous research facility. "Talk to Gardner - I don't care what it is I eat, I just need _something_ in my stomach. Gardner'll know what I like." She did for a moment wonder what she had just asked him to do, her mind was still a little fuzzy from the sedatives and she wasn't entirely convinced her behaviour was normal and... Briefly then she panicked – _what if Gardner gets suspicious from the fact Garrus is getting me food?_ – then she remembered with no small amount of displeasure: _No wait. The whole god damn __ship__ knows about me and Garrus by now..._ She sighed and shook her head at everything.

"No problem." Garrus said rising and throwing his tunic back over his shoulders, fastening it before tugging it down straight. Mind set on task he was heading for the door when a human hand caught his and next he knew two human arms were around him and Shepard had buried her head in his shoulder.

"Promise... you're coming back." She said solemnly. "I know you're only going down the lift and back and I know it's a _really _stupid thing to ask but... Please, just... promise."

Garrus began to imagine what it must have been like for her holding his cold body against her as he had drifted terminally out of her reach. He hugged her close and whispered down to her, lifting her gaze to his with his foretalon: "I can promise I can't think of _anywhere_ else I'd rather be, than right here with you." She hugged her head against him again, and stroked her hand from behind his crest down his neck in soft caresses, massaging the base of his spine through his tunic with her other hand._ Uhhnnn..._ He growled down to her, nearly forgetting that he was supposed to be embarking on a mission as he slid his fingers over her smooth bare back and through the silky strands of her hair. _Focus!_ He reprimanded himself as she let go. She swaggered off in the direction of the shower, bravely turning a sly smile in his direction as she walked through the bathroom door, "Good... Just make sure you remember that." And shut the door behind her. _Definitely... definitely need a cold shower._ He thought to himself smugly, _and __not__ with her_.

* * *

Garrus balanced the tray on one arm as he punched the button for the lift. He _had_ spared a scowl for Gardner who had sucked his cheeks and tried not to smile as Garrus had made his request: some food for himself..._ and... uh... something for Commander Shepard_. It was to say the least a little unnerving: getting looks off anyone with whom he crossed paths with as human eyes recognised obviously-human food. He was certainly feeling more than a little self-conscious of himself. _If this had been before she died I think I might have spaced myself by now to save myself the embarrassment._ But he was older now. Not that three years was really long enough to 'grow old', but then again his father had always told him – _you can sit in a room and read books until the day you die, but experience is what changes a boy into a man._ In many grim ways the hardened veteran cop had been right.

Shepard's death had changed him, made him harder, more prone to reckless behaviour – _I'll do whatever it takes to make a difference, just as she would do_ – he'd told himself. So his anger and frustration had driven him away from C-sec and civilised space to Omega, but... Omega had _also_ changed Garrus. For a time it had made him more arrogant as people flocked to his side as word spread of his good deeds. Through him they hoped for a chance to change a world that had before seemed impossibly cruel, corrupt and set to stay that way. _Like moths to a flame_ as it had turned out, and so eventually Omega planted a seed of _itself_ inside of him. It wasn't something he'd noticed straight away because after his team was murdered he was simply so mad with anger and determination for revenge that he'd fought and fought without fear of death or thought for anything else. Shepard would probably say he had been looking for his death when she had found him...

The need for revenge had burned itself into his heart and it kept him going when really he should have keeled over and coughed his last breath. Maybe it was the day he and Shepard had gone to hunt Sidonis on the Citadel that had made Garrus realise Omega _had_ become a part of him... when he had seen Omega and not himself reflected in her eyes as she calmly asked if he was alright, having not long ago stood herself between him and his revenge when it had been so close at hand. He'd never been one for mercy. Shepard had _taught_ him to exercise mercy, and upon her death he swore he'd try to remember everything he had learned from her example...

But it had taken her coming back from the dead and standing there in front of him, asking him on a dusty rapid transit platform "Are you gonna be alright? This isn't like you Garrus." for him to finally realise he'd even failed at keeping _that_ oath. He remembered her words when in response he had angrily asked her what she'd expected from him, what she would do in his shoes: "_I don't know Garrus. But I wouldn't let it change me._" That hit home. Omega _had_ changed Garrus. Yet the fact that he could see it at all by then gave him hope that he still had time to stop Omega from changing him in ways he didn't want it to – maybe even time enough to undo some of the things it _had_ done to him. He had been too proud, too angry and too confused to appreciate her concern and what it had revealed to him at the time, but later he _had_ managed to thank her. At least he had tried.

Now he was riding the lift up to Shepard's quarters, having found himself in the very strange position of wanting _her_ more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, and at the same time feeling never before as sure that in being allowed to _have_ her he was getting what he in no way deserved. He was still darker inside than he would like to admit, while she was still as pure a beacon of hope to the galaxy as she had ever been... and should he dare to admit it: to him as well. He sighed and shook his head, he was out of sight of her for ten minutes and already he'd turned into this moping self-pitying idiot. _Most people fail to appreciate what they have until they've lost it. Don't make the same mistake... _he told himself, and with a small amount of pride, the tiny part of him that seemed as yet still uncorrupted by life's toils and troubles reminded him: _and besides... she needs you_. He would honour that. Or die trying.

He made his way into Shepard's quarters, he could hear the sound of water raining down in the bathroom. _Not finished yet then? Now I know why I have to wait so long to go in the showers when there are more showers per person on this ship than on any turian cruiser I've ever served on._ He placed the tray of odds and sods Gardner had put together on the desk next to her personal console as he contemplated whether he would make her jump if he yelled that he'd returned and that he had food – not being certain she'd heard the door open. Then again she might jump to walk out of the bathroom to suddenly see him standing there if she hadn't heard the door open. Then he contemplated opening the door to the bathroom and just popping his head in to let her know... but thought better of it – that would be awfully intrusive of him to do so. So in the end he decided waiting was the least bad option, and started picking at his food.

He looked around at the model ships, watched the fish swimming about in their blue tank... Something moved suddenly just in his peripheral vision coupled with the tidiest noise, making him jump. "Hurh!" he growled, surprised, jumping backwards and feeling suddenly naked without a firearm equipped. He had definitely seen something. He was sure of it. _What was it?_ His hearing honed itself to hear above the sound of water pouring from the bathroom: an infrequent, very quiet scratching noise. _That noise is definitely coming from_ _in here_. His eyes scanned the area he thought he'd seen the movement – the shelves by the bathroom door...

_Something_ was in a glass tank on a shelf not far from the door – had to be in there as both his sight and his hearing told him that it was. Cautiously he moved towards the tank, watching for movement. Give him rabid varren, crazed rachni, exploding thorian creepers, geth, husks... Hell he'd even dealt with a rather-too-forward inebriated hanar in his early days working for C-sec – someone had apparently found it amusing to slip the poor jellyfish something that made it behave rather... peculiarly... _Never did track down who that was... _– "AARGH!" Garrus yelled. Whatever it was just zoomed out of a little box, flitted about and then scurried back into its creepy little hidey hole. Give him anything _else_ and Garrus was steady as a rock, but tiny... skittering... scuttling... nibbling things.... he did not like.

The bathroom door shot open. "What's wrong?" Shepard had heard him yell (he'd been more than loud enough) and had bolted out of the shower soaking wet. She stood clutching a red towel half-wrapped around herself, heart-stoppingly worried at first. Garrus was standing stone still, his stance and expression hard to read except as one of 'on high alert for something'. She caught the shifting in his eyes to her, then quickly back to whatever it was he'd objected to, then forcibly back to her again... _Just to the right of my shoulder around about eye level..._ She tracked where he had looked, and, quickly getting over the shock, a grin threatened to grow from ear to ear as she suspected what the fuss was all about. "Garrus..?" She was trying terribly, terribly hard to be serious, to stop that grin from fully maturing. "Garrus?" She pursed her lips, still trying to keep a straight face, not to let herself snigger – "Are you... afraid... of a space hamster?" She had to suck both her lips to keep herself from erupting with laughter as he looked to her most insulted as his startled expression turned to one of hurt pride and finally: 'obviously miffed'.

"It..._ moved._" He said. _Damned humans and their pets! _ That was what he really wanted to say, or rather yell very loudly. Standing up straight now, recovering his composure and his pride. Every now and then his eyes would shift over her shoulder to the tank.

"Yes." She said quietly, "They do that, Garrus." She sounded so patronising, but she couldn't help it. She had to suck her cheeks in to contain herself from the hilarity.

"It just... caught me off guard." Garrus flexed his mandibles, powerful jaw muscles tensed and relaxed. He could see an unusually sinister glint in her eyes as she stood there making puddles on the deck plates. "You're making a puddle." He commented, but she just stood there and raised an eyebrow, ignoring his attempt to change the subject. Soon he'd be more worried about what _she_ was going to do rather than the thing in the tank. He breathed deep, steadying his composure and shrugged, turning a glance towards the tank. "I... didn't know you had one." He expressed calmly, rather cheerfully actually, relaxing back against the pillar next to where she displayed all her model ships lest she think he was mortally terrified or something.

"You _are_, aren't you!" She shoved him off balance and he had to catch himself with a foot behind himself. There was this stupid, gleeful grin plastered all over her face as she began laughing herself out of breath as she howled hysterically, leaning against his shoulder. Garrus frowned, feeling awfully embarrassed – he did _not_ enjoy being laughed at. But, just as it always had been, Shepard's laughter was contagious. His pride slowly slipped aside and he couldn't help chuckling himself. He found himself thinking it was good to hear her laughing this hard, even if it was at his expense.

He shook his head as he joined in the amusement. "Give me mercs, thorians, husks..." he chuckled.

" But not _space hamsters_." Shepard finished his sentence with a giggle and gasped for breath. "Garrus I never thought I'd say this but you're a big wuss. Honestly..."

Garrus sighed and shook his head. "Don't tell anyone about that though, huh? I might _completely_ lose my attractiveness to the opposite sex... Seeing as how the only women who might find _these_ scars attractive are krogan – and we all know what they'd think of a guy supposedly afraid of space hamsters." She frowned at gim just long enough for him to add: "Well... besides you..."

Shepard cocked her head and looked at him with curiosity, as if what he'd just said surprised her in some way or she was trying to figure something out. Then she just smiled. "Hmph. Well... you got me out of the shower. I had just about finished but I was enjoying the warmth of the water." Soap tickled her back, "Ah. Feels like I still need to rinse off a bit of soap off though..." She muttered, then louder upon spotting the tray: "What did Gardner fish out for me?" She looked over Garrus' strange assortment of morsels and then recognising her own plate, exclaimed: "Ooo!" and Garrus dodged out of the way of energetic bony fingers as she snatched at something. "Chicken druwmstwick" [chews] "Mmm..." [swallows] "God I'm starving." She quickly stripped all the meat from the bone and threw it back on the tray. Considering humans distinctly lacked the dental equipment to handle a carnivorous diet she sure as hell packed that meat away quickly. "I should really go back and rinse off so I can clear up this mess." She hitched up the towel, sparing a glance down at the puddle pooling around her feet. "But that definitely helped. Thank you..." she smiled, sparing a peck on his cheek – or rather mandible – startling him with the custom which did not exist in turian culture, then disappeared back into the bathroom.

Garrus again spotted movement in the tank, the skittish thing must have caught a whiff of something edible. He scowled in its direction and growled: satisfied when the creature flinched and instantly scuttled back into its hiding place. He picked up the tray of food and hunted for somewhere _else_ to put it, away from hungry tiny little eyes. _Ah_, there was actually a corner with a small – _what is it humans call it? _– coffee table and a rather low-to-the-ground sofa. He always felt rather ungainly sitting on those low human seats so he stood, munching away at his own plate of food and waiting for the sound of the bathroom door opening. Shepard didn't take long, he watched through the glass and models as she wiped up the puddle, noticing she had even dressed. Garrus tried not to feel slightly disappointed at the latter – he _had_ looked at the smooth shape of her thighs as she had headed back into the bathroom with the towel barely covering her behind, and he _had_ rather enjoyed the view.

"Ummmnnnn..." She moaned deeply, rubbing her neck as she walked out of the bathroom having put the spare towel back to try. It was a noise that made Garrus' heart beat just a _little_ harder as he heard it. "I _really_ needed that..." She sighed and walked on over. Garrus felt a small rush of nervousness – it had been easier not to notice the kinds of noises she could make sometimes when he knew there was no chance of him having her. Now things had changed yet again, and even though he was sure he had no reason to feel insecure, he couldn't help watching her intently as she swayed her hips as she walked closer. Human and turian females did have at least _that _in common: a pronounced swagger in their step, all the more so when they wanted to get a man's attention... She bent down towards the tray of food, giving him a devious look beneath her eyebrows as she did so to make him watch her all the more cautiously. However, any nervousness he was feeling was soon flatly set aside when with a smirk on her face, she remarked: "I still can't believe you're afraid of a space hamster." She chuckled, grabbing another of those _chicken_ things.

Garrus huffed, replacing 'nervous' with 'slightly insulted' as he tried hard not to scowl. _I'm never going to live that down am I?_ "Not _afraid_. I just don't _like_ things that make sharp or sudden movements_. _Kicks off hunter instincts."

"What about insects then?" She frowned.

"Never bothered me. They don't move the same way."

Shepard pulled a strange face, like something tasted sour. "Fair enough." She nodded, raising her eyebrows and then relaxing into a pleasant smile. Apparently she was going to drop the subject... for now. She cleaned another bone and bent down to put it back on the tray. "Huh." She remarked, "Just noticed neither of us has sat down yet." Then she seemed to say under her breath, "_Now is that from being bedbound or is it just because I'm so used to eating on the run..?"_

"We can sit down if you want –"

"How long was I out?" Garrus suddenly found questioning eyes peering up at him, hard and calculating. The question seemed to come out of nowhere. He wasn't entirely sure he should answer it, worrying it might bring up a conversation he desperately wanted to avoid – the one where he had to tell her everything that had happened between their being on that planet and here and now. That could lead to more questions about the current state of affairs, the mission... and Commander Shepard would be going back to work at least in her mind if she did not storm off to the command deck straight away.

Garrus cleared his throat. "Honestly? I couldn't say. Thane suggested it was about fifty eight hours between evac and me waking up in Life Support." He was not surprised when another question burned on her lips, but as it would turn out he'd wonder if perhaps this one was really her _original_ question and she'd only just worked herself up to ask it:

"You did die... Didn't you?" Her eyes shimmered with moisture but her expression was stone cold and completely calm. Now he found himself wishing she'd stuck with her _first_ question. He swallowed the morsel he'd begun chewing and placed the slice he held between his talons back down on his plate. He carefully moved towards her, placing a hand on either shoulder.

"_I'm alright... Shepard..."_ he said softly, looking down into the eyes of this wild thing that stared back, arms tensed straight down from her shoulders to clenched fists. He wasn't used to seeing this strange mixed display of anger and sorrow. He did his best to offer a combination of comfort and professional support.

"That's not what I asked. Answer the god damn question Garrus." She was evidently determined to know the truth, and to discuss things right here and now. Her eyes burned.

Garrus respected her wishes, although he worried what her reaction would be. He took in a deep breath and let it go, blinking and pulling his head back as he did so as if steeling himself for something. "Yes." He finally answered, "Technically... I died." He could see her eyes were growing increasingly moist, but her expression – cold as Noveria – warned him not to try to comfort her. "I apparently had two problems." He began, matter-of-fact, but refusing to let the anger in her eyes persuade him to remove his hands from her shoulders – physical contact still felt important to maintain.

"The first problem I had was that turians were evolved for arid environments, not cold ones – cold hampers our immune system response and... we don't generate as much heat from shivering as humans or asari do." Still silent, piercing eyes stared up at him. He continued: "The other problem... Was that my immune system _really_ needed to be fighting what had got into my body through my lungs. Apparently that _thing_ didn't just spit out corrosives, it spit out some... organic... pathogenic cloud – like seeds or spores..." Pain contorted Shepard's face as she vividly recalled how helplessly she had watched in that moment, as the creature turned and sprayed whatever-it-was over his armour. "According to Thane, Chakwas believed you must have kept me warm enough just long enough for my body to start making antibodies, but... Strange thing is that it was probably my _dying_ that actually _saved_ my life."

The way Shepard looked now as tears welled in her eyes made him want to stop – she looked numb... However, he _knew_ that if he did, somehow she'd find a way to bring it up again if he didn't tell her everything right now, so, he continued. "The spores – or whatever they were – were spreading through my blood stream like a virus. They got in through my lungs, and every heartbeat helped pump them to every vital organ. When I died it temporarily halted the spread. She had to keep me on ice until she'd worked out which drugs to use and until our dearest Professor Mordin had manufactured enough antibodies or whatever to fix the problem. _That's_ why they didn't tell you – it was hit and miss for a while whether or not they could resurrect my brain activity with the Cerberus implants."

Garrus stared into the ceiling and sighed. "I guess death and I are _old_ friends – if I hadn't nearly died on Omega it wouldn't have mattered how many drugs or... _antibodies _they pumped into me; I'd have been brain-dead. Not sure if I'm entirely pleased that Cerberus implants helped save my life but..." When he looked down his dark humour had not lightened the mood. The pain etched on Shepard's face was almost sharp enough to make Garrus wince. But then her clenched fists relaxed and a tear rolled down her cheek. _No more._ He told himself. _That's enough – anything else she can ask about later. I can't do this and watch anymore. _He pulled her towards him and she embraced him, squeezing him hard enough to make him tense his stomach muscles to keep from being winded.

"I'm so sorry Garrus..." She buried her head in his shoulder. He stroked her hair and hushed her as she began to sob. He had never been any good at consolatory sympathy, but he wanted more than anything to be able to stop her from crying. Maybe he'd have been embarrassed in the past to witness Shepard in this state, as embarrassed for her as he would be for anyone showing such an open display of weakness. Now however, he simply felt incredibly honoured that not only did she feel comfortable enough around him to show such weakness in front of him, but that essentially it was _for_ him that her weakness existed.

"Shh..." He tried, "It's alright now... I'm alright. Chakwas analysed the infection, copied my antibodies... or something... did some other miracle work, and got me back up on my feet with a lot of adrenalin, some help from my cybernetic implants... Oh yeah and at some point she yelled at me that you were in trouble and that you needed me." Shepard coughed a laugh between sobs and squeezed him. He could just about tell that she had managed a smile from what little he could see of her cheeks buried as they were in his shoulder. He tried to keep it going, "Heaven knows why that last part worked..." He coaxed another laugh from her, louder this time. "After all it's normally _you_ pulling _my_ ass out of the fire... but..." He squeezed her against him, "I heard her... and I came back." She held fast to him, and sighed. _Just like you did for me when I needed you most,_ Garrus thought to her – her timing on Omega could not have been any more perfect... but he couldn't say that out loud – he wouldn't dare presume that _he_ was the sole reason she yet breathed. Shepard seemed destined to be the whole damn _galaxy's_ guardian angel, it was just coincidence that in addition to that _higher_ purpose she'd _also_ been his. _I'm the archangel of death, you're the archangel of life – I guess that means we fit together pretty well... _he thought quietly to her, and held her close.

* * *

Author note: I'm trying to make sure I leave each instalment of my story with a feeling of closure, so that you can treat each as 'the ending' if you wish – finish the story where you want to.


	6. Chapter 6: Regret

09 April 2010

Regret

Disclaimer: the characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: contains sexually explicit material. 16yrs+ readers only please.

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepherd too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepherd, so I leave those parts up to your imagination.

* * *

Garrus looked down upon the silky crown of the female human huddled against him, holding him tightly as if he were all that was keeping her from floating off into space and eternal darkness. He wasn't sure he'd _ever_ get used to seeing her like this, nor the way it made him feel more content than he had ever been in his life. When Shepherd clung to him in this way with such frailty, such weakness: two _very_ strange things happened.

The _first_ thing was that Garrus found himself thinking all sorts of deep-rooted, tender feelings. That was weird enough, although he'd admit that sometimes he could be a little sentimental. However, love wasn't something that had ever been for Garrus. It was not something that really occurred to him as such, well... not unless you include 'love of beating criminal bastards to a bloody pulp' (he did so love doing that) or love of his sniper rifle. He had never looked to find a mate – after all living on the citadel and the Normandy he had been unlikely to meet a female turian, let alone start a family with one. If it was love he felt for Shepherd then that made things doubly strange because 1) Shepherd wasn't turian – she was _human_, and 2) the intensity of his feeling towards her set it apart from anything he'd ever known, seen, or heard of.

OK so there had been the odd suicide or murder he'd investigated at C-sec that had been related to supposed 'love' in one way or another. Certainly he imagined if any harm were to come to her now then whosoever was responsible for that would meet a very _painful_ end at his hands. The weirdest part was that the closest thing he could compare the way he felt about Shepherd was the stuff legend – stories he had learned as a child, like the story of the two moons that orbited his homeworld. _Insanity..._ He told himself as he thought about it. Regardless, these were feelings that had persisted long after only one time spent in Shepherd's bed, and they had not waned in intensity. As he listened to the small snuffling noises she made – head buried into his shoulder the words "I'm not letting go" just kept running on loop through his mind. _Damn_ she got under his skin, but right now he wouldn't have it any other way, and more than anything he wanted to stay with her like this forever. _We're both crazy, that's what it is_.

He stroked his fingers through her silky hair. It surely was madness... How else could he explain how he was feeling? He was filled with a sense of inner peace as his fingers threaded between the strands of her hair, whilst simultaneously there was a growing hunger for her, passion bubbling through his blood enough to make it boil... and all the while he seemed to have this empowered mental restraint. It was a more-than-slightly confusing state to be in. Where the hell had he got this phenomenal self-restraint _from_ anyway?

That... was the _second_ strange thing that happened when Shepherd held to him this way. Sure, give Garrus a sniper rifle and tell him to track down a villain and he could do it swiftly, dead calm, knowing when to strike and when to bide his time. _Patience_ he had when he knew there was an end goal in sight, but it had been Shepherd that had stopped him from blowing Sidonis' brains out across the Citadel floor. It had been her restraint – not _his_ – that had pulled him back from becoming something, someone he would have hated. But now here he was: his instincts were driving him hard to do things – the sorts of hormonally-driven things that would override all logical thought capacity in any _normal_ turian – and yet he still held fast to his conscious thoughts and he _wanted_ to be in control, to be aware of everything he was doing. _Maybe this is the final proof that I really __don't__ make a good turian._ He thought to himself._ Add to that I was recently clinically dead for 40 hours and I'm seriously wondering if I should be packed off to therapy or something, because I am __obviously__ totally__ screwed up..._

Witnessing her frailty he also felt somehow _stronger_ – invincible even – like suddenly he could _really_ make a difference and change the world for the better. Through her weakness she gave him this 'indomitable willpower'. _Is it right to draw strength from another's weakness?_ He almost felt guilty for it – it seemed dishonourable, and yet he was also filled with this insurmountable sense of _righteousness_. It filled him with confidence, until he became certain he could somehow hold this beautiful soul in his arms, protect it, and watch over it as it rinsed itself clean of all that had soiled it. _A soul_, he reminded himself quietly and with just a touch of pride: _who'd more than likely afterwards go on to save the galaxy – again and again_. In this moment he almost felt like maybe, just maybe, _this_ was the true purpose for his ever having been brought into existence: _To be here for __her_... the 'Hero of the Citadel' and the single most persistent hope for organic life in the galaxy against the Reapers. Maybe he was born for this, to be here for her to rest her wings when she was tired and to be her sanctuary whenever and in whatever way it was required.

Cold settled in his stomach as an unsettling thought crossed his mind: _Do I... worship her..?_ He felt a distasteful pang of disgust at the thought. Worship would dishonour everything that Shepherd stood for: a standard by which to judge yourself against. More important than that, she represented a standard that could and should be attained – for she was mortal, just like everyone else. _No. This is not worship. Maybe I worshipped her once a long time ago, but not anymore. I __know__ she's mortal. Universe be damned I __know__ that – I've __seen__ it. I remember the silence... the emptiness left behind when she was taken from us. I saw it in Kaidan's eyes and more than that I __felt__ it. When she was gone that was the first time any of us truly realised that she could actually __die__._ Garrus recalled how at first he just couldn't believe it, then he'd felt sick to his stomach – like in some way they had all betrayed her by never really appreciating that fact while she was still alive... He had realised how much more impressive that made her already incredible résumé. _No_. He definitely appreciated her mortality now, and he had every intention of fully appreciating _her_ now that he'd been given this second chance.

_No turning back_. He was sure of that now, there was no denying how he felt about her – he would have to follow it through to the end, _no more excuses_. He wanted to scoop her up and hide her away right now, to _be_ everything she needed. The confidence that burned inside him telling him that he could actually do that was downright intoxicating... finally he gave in. He leaned down and lifted her, scooping her up into his arms. She seemed so light and so small. He could sense she was so vulnerable, just as she had been down in Med bay an hour ago when he saw her the first time since... well... _dying in her arms_. She said nothing and made no noise save a few snuffles. She only clung to him with her arms around his neck, fingering between the hardened leather plates of the back of his neck and around the rim of his collarbone.

Shepherd was not a character he had become accustomed to unburdening her emotions and worries onto other people, and so he didn't really expect her to be explaining anything right now. _That's alright. She doesn't have to. It's enough that she needs me._ The light motions her fingertips were making over his skin were so gentle they nearly made him shiver. He walked around the side of the double bed – covers still crisply tucked over the pillows. Kneeling on the bed he set her down carefully, keeping his fringe and throat at all times within her reach so that she could continue her hypnotic ministrations undisturbed – it seemed to soothe her and it's not like he wasn't enjoying the attention. He smiled and purred softly to her.

Memories of scent, sound, and textures flooded his thoughts as he recalled in greater detail how he had come to lie here with her in her quarters for the first time; the last time. Suddenly what had seemed so long ago was now fresh in his mind... He remembered the way time had stood still, how the sounds she had made had melted his heart and had drawn out the deepest yearning for her. He recalled how it had felt to move inside her and how he had stared into her eyes, thinking to her things he'd never thought to _anyone_... before _her_. He'd sworn it was the work of magic how they had lain here, insulated from the ebb and flow of the universe and all its troubles, damn she had been so beautiful... _like now_. _She's gorgeous... __It's happening again I swear I can feel it..._

Shepherd lay silently moving her fingers in sweeping strokes over a familiar face with alien hide – eyes shut tight in remembrance of being with him like this so very long ago. She allowed her senses to bask in the moment. As she concentrated, she could even _feel_ the sound of his breathing through her fingertips, smell the leather of his skin through her tongue as she licked her lips, and she could hear within every purr he made that he wanted her, _really_... wanted her. She remembered how surprised she had been the first time at how gentle he had been with her. She knew she was safe in this one instant – no more monsters, no demons... Garrus would keep them from her.

Any other time in her life and she'd have looked in the mirror and called herself pathetic for the way she now surrendered all of her responsibilities, all of her pain, _everything_ – to him, the turian who hot-headedly quit his job as a C-sec investigator to go chase Sarren around the galaxy with a human spectre. 'Impulsive' didn't sufficiently describe what she'd thought of him back then when they had first met. He had seemed so young, so full of bluster and arrogance and self-righteousness – damn he'd been a pain in the ass. She'd had to show him more than once that the quick and easy way was not always the best way. She'd certainly never have trusted him enough to surrender everything to him the way she was doing right now... she would not have come to _him_ for sanctuary. And yet here he was, in her quarters, leaning over her, lying next to her on her own bed. _How things have changed..._

Then again... she always _had_ seen in him a sweetness that she had felt the need to nurture, because it reflected something of herself she had always had to fight very hard to hold onto: her 'humanity'. It was ironic perhaps that an alien would remind her so much of what she thought it was to be human. She had nearly pulled her hair out thanks to Garrus on more than one occasion, but she had also grown to respect him. He would offer words of reason when she least expected them, and of all the people in her life right now, she felt like deep down he was the one who best knew her. But also... the one who most needed her. _Maybe that's why I'm willing to drop my guard for him..?_

It certainly was strange to be so attracted to a turian. Nylus – for the brief time she had known that turian – had won her respect, and Garrus in some ways often reminded her of the dead spectre. With one sentence Nylus had disarmed every concern she had thought to worry about regarding his alien intentions: _I don't care that you're human Shepherd..._ He opened her eyes on a different side to turians than the one that she had learned to fear and then dislike as a child. Garrus too had the same level of integrity – a rare thing to find in any individual regardless of race; experience had taught her that. But Garrus had also surprised her by showing a tenderness she would never have expected to find in a turian. However she now recognised that Garrus was also unique in so many ways... standing apart from the crowd, just as she had always found herself.

_Why? Why __am__ I surrendering like this?_ For a moment she panicked:_ I didn't even behave this way in Kaidan.._. But Shepherd found her answer. It was because she trusted Garrus. But she trusted him not just with her life – although that was not something many could claim (which had made Kaidan special at the time) – she also trusted him with _herself_. She trusted _him_, and only him, to bear her burdens, to take control. When they had landed on the Collector base, it was _him_ she chose to lead the second team. She had known, that if ever there was her equal, someone as steady in the face of danger and as determined to succeed as she was, it was Garrus. So now he took everything away so that she didn't _have_ to be 'Commander Shepherd' anymore... At least for a time.

_But you know you'll have to go back eventually._ The part of her that clung to her responsibilities like they were her very own life-support, now pleaded for her to remember how she had felt when last time it had ended so abruptly. _You never learned. You never learn... You let your guard down and look where it got you. _It was her father's voice speaking these words... She had always been his youngest apprentice, but being her father's daughter she had had to learn twice as fast as everyone else, and she had to be the best of all his students. _Remember the pain you felt when you had to pile all of your defences back up again? _ It was like the day the slavers came, and he had told her to hide because she was not ready to fight. _No you cannot help. You still allow your emotions to run too close to the surface, _he had told her, _if you truly want to fight for something you must learn sacrifice, patience, and above all to remain calm. This will be my last lesson to you._ She had cried, and he had yelled at her to run, his last words would echo in her ears every time she was in trouble from then on: _Be strong. I am proud of you._

However good she seemed to get at putting a lid on it, Shepherd was still a deeply emotional person. Now a war waged between how she had lived her life since then and her need for emotional expression. Her father's voice again reminded her of how she had felt when the call to hit the Omega Relay had come in. _Remember how raw that left you..? You can't just cast off who you are for a different skin Shepherd, your pain and your responsibilities are what make you who you are. You cannot simply abandon them..._ The conflict waged within her, but, nothing his voice could say would be able to make her wish away this moment, and more than anything she just wanted to let it all go...

Then it came to her... Shepherd found a way to do it, to let go of everything... She found a way to still her father's voice: _When it ends, it ends. _She told herself resolutely._ Garrus deserves better than rejection, and so do I. I won't waste any more time. _Not now that she knew what it was like to truly regret, not now she knew what it was like to think that there would _be_ no more time. She swore it:_ Never again..._

A foretalon brushed over her forehead, stroking away the frown that had been developing. She smiled forlornly, still thinking of what she had so nearly lost. Grateful – she was so, _so_ glad he was here, so overjoyed that he yet lived and yet drowning in sorrow for what could have been. She humbly thanked everyone (and anyone) who had to do with Garrus' resurrection. His gentle touch coincided with a soft thud on the floor, prompting her to open her eyes – primed for emergency, her heart skipped a beat. Upon opening her eyes her heart skipped again as instead of his tunic she found bare muddy-brown hide and silver grey plating before her: Garrus propping himself up on one elbow and naked from the waist up. He was smiling thoughtfully over her – so it had been the dull sound of his tunic crumpling as it hit the floor that she had heard.

Reaching towards her throat he tugged with a talon at the placement of the first fastening of her uniform, raising a quizzical brow as he did so. Her heart raced, _Ah_. She hadn't noticed what she was wearing. She hadn't really meant to put her _uniform_ on after showering, but had unwittingly done so on auto-pilot. Feeling rather self-conscious she nervously bit her lip, smiling shyly as she undid the clip of her collar. Blue eyes gazed softly down on her in lazy interest, mandibles parting as Garrus then tracked the movement of his talon – stroking down from her chin to her throat, then to the next fastening... Still biting her lip but smiling a little more, she undid the next fastening, and again he lightly stroked the back of his talon down from her jaw to the next fastening. Patiently he waited for her to undo the next fastening, and then the next, and the next... When finally he could stroke down from her temple to her navel, to his satisfaction she let escape a small gasp as he did so. She was so sensitive and he just _loved_ seeing her react so strongly to so little.

He peeled open the military pressed tunic. Following the trail of his talon he lightly drew his whole hand, fingers spread, in a second sweep down her curves, listening intently as she sighed to his touch and lifted herself towards his fingers. Her skin was unbelievably soft, and warm. Then, he followed the same path with his mouth as he gently tickled his mandibles over her smooth skin. He breathed in deep, her scent brought forth far stronger memories than he would have expected – lightly fragranced and damp from the shower, _exactly_ as she had been the first time. She gasped and closed her eyes, following his mouth down her body with her own fingers, a behaviour he watched with quickening arousal. _She did __that__ too_, he remembered – awash with echoing memories of passion and the current erotic behaviour that reality was unfolding before his eyes. _Damn... I... She..._ He had to growl to steady his breath and focus his thoughts. He was bursting with anticipation, so much it almost hurt.

Reaching the oh-so-soft skin that tapered down from her stomach to between her hips he growled wantonly into her, watching as she pushed her head back into the pillows, arching her back as her fingers snaked over her breasts and down. She groaned. _Oh hell..._ _Do you have to be so damned sexy?_ Heaven knows how he held his restraint – his instincts were setting his nerves on fire as they co-operatively slid down her lower garments. The small moans she made as he slid his thumbs down the inside of her knees as he removed her trousers and underwear certainly weren't helping – except to make him burn all the more to be inside of her. But he breathed deep and steadied himself somehow, smiling as he recalled the first time he had seen her underwear - unbearably cute for providing her barely a semblance of protection._ Hah!_ But as he slid his fingers around her thighs she twisted and writhed against his nuzzling, drawing her fingers through the fronds of his fringe, pushing him to the edge of his control not least because he could also now _smell_ her readiness... He _almost _ lost his restraint as realised it.

He relented his nuzzling, drawing himself back up the curves of her form to bring himself to lie beside her, propping himself up so that he could gaze down upon her. As he stared into those trusting eyes, he again found that inner strength that gave him the restraint he needed to make sure he would _never _ move too fast, _never_ harm her. More than anything he wanted to protect her. He smiled, pleased with himself as she looked up expectantly, and knew he would enjoy what was yet to come in a way he never knew was possible before he met _her_. He teased his restored restraint as he lightly drew a single talon down her nose, over her lips – curiously supple and rather _interesting _ things. Continuing down her throat, over one breast – another part of human anatomy he seemed to like more and more – and then down her abdomen, he elicited from her a most satisfying murmur of contentment.

She wriggled in response to his touch. _Damn... _Every time she made those sounds it made his heart race and he found himself again desperate to plunge himself into her and teetering on the edge of self-control. Yet he somehow found his calm – that seemingly unlimited self-restraint he could find _only_ with _her_... He stroked down her neck to her shoulder, pushing against the material of her tunic just enough to make her notice that she was still wearing it. He chuckled when to his amusement she muttered "Oops..." and hastily removed it.

Maybe it was because he _wanted_ to remember every moment, and sheer determination kept him steady. Maybe it was simply because he respected her so sincerely that he just wanted to be sure he wouldn't harm her, or maybe... _maybe_ this was just what love _could_ be: him wanting to know that _she_ was enjoying _him_ as sincerely as _he_ was enjoying _her_. He gave up trying to figure out why he was able to do what he was doing and lifted his weight on one arm. Still caressing her as he moved he was especially pleased when he caught her sliding her eyes over his muscles as they tautened, he couldn't help but smirk. _I want to be __everything__ you want... _he thought smugly to her.

He slid one knee carefully down the inside of her thigh... She moaned in eager anticipation, spreading her legs apart invitingly, again setting his nerves on fire. Nuzzling down into her neck he purred into her flesh until she embraced him. _Hold on to me,_ he thought to her, _hold on to me and don't let go. _Affectionately she nuzzled up to him as she pressed her nose to his, smiling sweetly. A wave of relief suddenly washed over him and he sighed longingly to her. He was relieved to find himself here like this, with her. He honestly thought he'd never get a second chance. He wanted to tell her again how much he had thought about her since their first time, how he'd longed for her – especially as he had lain in her arms for what he thought would be the last time: trying desperately to cling to existence, or to take with him that one _last_ memory of her face into oblivion... or wherever it is you go when you die. He had so very much wanted to lose himself inside her, one last time, and he could barely believe that his dying wish was now coming true. He wanted to tell her now how amazing she was... How speechless (and secretly prideful) he had been when Thane had told him that she had gone completely wild with anger and sorrow when they had prised her from his body.

_I am so, so sorry I left you,_ He stroked down her body, mournfully wishing he could undo what had happened... the sorrow she must have felt._ I tried so hard to hold on. I didn't want to break you..._ He stroked down her cheek tenderly._ I am __so __lucky__ to have this second chance._ He had only to look into her eyes now to gain all the reassurance he could ever need that she truly wanted him, truly needed him, just how _much_ she trusted him. He could now believe everything that Thane had told him. However, even if he wanted to risk breaking this spell by speaking to her, he could not bring himself to mouth the words, able only to purr low and deep with satisfaction as he stared into her eyes. _Just don't let go,_ he begged her silently,_ whatever happens._

He slid his hand down her shoulders and over her waist as he brought his other knee inside of hers, and lifted her aft towards him, delighted as she swung her legs around his waist and over his hips. He was reminded of her strength as he backed them both towards the foot of the bed – she hung one armed from his shoulders, affectionately fingering his mandibles with her free hand. She rocked against him, sliding herself over his bare stomach and the material of his trousers, making him swallow hard against this new erotic distraction. He had to growl to steady his breathing. He lay her down onto the bed as he stepped to the floor, hastily removing his trousers just in time to block the pillow that would have thudded next to his head. Instead he grabbed it, and threw it off the side of the bed. _I don't need the damned pillow. __I__ don't need protecting. _Before she could say a word to match her worried expression he was back over her, pressing his body to hers lightly but firmly, his forehead to hers, and growling deeply as he stared into her eyes. _Stop trying to protect me and just let it all __go__. _He slid one hand under her shoulders and silenced her words with a finger to her lips with the other._ I'm here to protect __you__, nothing more, nothing less._

He was satisfied when she moaned as if the last cares of the world had just evaporated from her shoulders and he nuzzled down into her neck, growling into her lustfully. It was then that she melted, frowning as she kissed up to his finger, nuzzling it out of the way as she moaned and kissed his mandibles, fighting against his attentions to nuzzle into his neck. He hugged her close as he stroked his hand down the arm that embraced him to her shoulder, and she hugged him back, writhing against him as he continued to slide his thumb down over her breast and her belly to her hips. He could enter her at any moment if he chose to now. She was frantic. Passion coursed through his veins with the gratification that he received, seeing just how much she _wanted_ him inside her – the way she tried to pull him closer with her legs. Determined to take his time and not to hurt her he retained the self-control to hold himself from rushing into her. _No._ Give his life to save her. _Never_ harm her.

But something made him question if something was wrong... She was desperately passionate – he could sense a change in her. He lifted himself from her just enough to look down upon her, and was mortified to see a tear glittering as it slid from eyes clenched shut. She looked as if she were in terrible pain. He froze, worry spreading across his face. "Hey..." He touched her cheek gently, cautiously, greatly concerned. The noise of his own voice made him jump – the sound of it coarse to his ears. Her response was confusing – she nuzzled into his hand but didn't answer. "Did I... Have I hurt you in some way..?" He tried to ask, frightened that somehow he might have, could have, maybe accidentally..?

She cackled a peculiar, mocking laugh – "You?" She sniffed and shook her head... "You have _never _hurt me..." At least that _sounded_ honest... She held his hand to her cheek with her own. "Oh Garrus you've never, ever hurt me. I don't think you could..." She smiled, still pained, still clenching her eyes shut as yet another tear escaped. "It's just..." She tried breathe, "It's just..."

Garrus began to realise what it must have been like for her to have cradled him in her arms, probably thinking he was gone forever. If she felt as strongly for him as he did for her then readjustment was going to be a long, painful process. He remembered what it had been like for himself years earlier: watching the last lifepod eject only to discover that _she_ wasn't on it... watching the Normandy burst silently into flame and wreckage, knowing that Shepherd was still out there. Having said that, Shepherd was far stronger than any ordinary person, and he had been surprised that she would behave this way. Perhaps if he'd had even the slightest clue of how much she would mean to him now, he would have reacted the way she did and done worse than simply kick himself for having never tried to tell her. Then suddenly it hit him...

He added together the pieces of what Thane had told him of her reaction towards his death and the way she was behaving now. Slowly the pieces fit together... She had chosen after their first time to put her feelings aside and with good reason, or so Garrus had _thought_. He had before assumed it a wise decision: one she had simply deemed necessary to make to maintain her strength and resolve to deal with the greater tasks at hand. It had seemed logical enough. However he now began to think – much to his horror – that she had possibly made that decision out of _fear..._

It dawned on him that he had never seen Shepherd truly regret _anything_. Not even when he watched her knowingly make the decision that would leave Ashley – a friend and a comrade – behind on Virmire to die. Shepherd had merely been silent, sadness betrayed only by her eyes which were quickly filled with anger. That anger she would later use constructively to sure up her determination to stop Saren. That was how she seemed to deal with things and he had always admired her for it. But what he could see _now..._ was regret. He was sure of it. He'd seen it often in the eyes of witnesses to murder who could have - and knew they _should_ have - done something about it, but instead had simply stood and watched it happen. He'd hated those people. Regret was the price a person paid for doing nothing when they could have done something and knew that they should. That's why he always preferred to do something - anything - rather than nothing, earning himself a reputation for recklessness in the process. So then, this was not pain of 'now' he was seeing, but fear of history repeating itself.

_I did this to her. _Memory replayed in his mind as he recalled the look on her face as the call came in to signal it was time to hit the Omega Relay. _She couldn't cope – I stripped away all her defences and then just let her get on with it... _And that's exactly what she must have done. She just got on with it. But what else could he have expected from her? He should have known she'd force herself to get on with things no matter what, even if she was broken: it was who she was. _And then instead of trying to fix the situation, I __supported__ her decision!_ His blood began to boil, he had been such a fool. _What if she needed me to go to her..? _ She had looked so shocked when he had pulled away from her, the pain in her expression forever etched onto his memory. Dread sunk into his stomach like krogan rynchol and left him feeling just as violently sick...

_He_ of course had tried not to give her even the slightest inclination that he felt rejected _or _that he still cared deeply for her, because he didn't want to make her job any harder or complicate things. But he'd based all of that on the assumption that her staying away from him was a rational decision. _Imagine if she was afraid to risk reopening that wound, __especially__ not knowing how I felt on the matter... Shepherd you damned fool... _ It would have eaten away at her as it did him: silently, secretly until... _Until some event forced it to the surface. Like either one of us dying..._ He was sure then that as he had lain dying in her arms, such regret could have, surely would have, obviously had torn her apart. _Goddamn __genius__ Garrus. _And to Shepherd:_ You damned idiot! Why didn't you talk to me?_

"Hey." He said, turning her jaw to face him, she didn't open her eyes. "Hey." He said louder – "Look at me." Slowly she opened her eyes, and the frown diminished into pure sorrow.

"I just... remember everything you told me on that blasted world... everything." She spoke with a small, strangled voice, almost a whisper. "I couldn't believe I could lose you, not like that... not when I hadn't told you... I didn't... because I couldn't..." She shook her head and closed her eyes again, the pain again returned to her expression. The past was still so near.

"Hey!" He yelled, getting her attention and forcing her back to here and now – he hadn't quite meant for it to sound so angry... "You weren't the only one afraid you'd lost something." Again the strain in his voice made him sound angrier than he meant to be, "I... I thought that my only chance..." His voice began to fade. She still had her eyes clenched shut, "Goddamn it Shepherd!" He growled with frustration and gripped the back of her skull in one hand, "Look at me Shepherd when I'm trying to tell you something important!" _Great going Garrus. __Real__ smooth..._ "I thought I was never going to get the chance to tell you that I love you! Don't you see? I lay dying in your arms, _hating_ myself for never trying to tell you that until it was too damned late!" He barred his teeth and snarled.

"You're not the only one who felt the burden of regret!" He _was_ angry – at her stupidity, at his own, and generally at everything that had ever gone wrong in his life. He desperately wanted to make her realise how important she was to him and he was really making a mess of it. Shepherd slowly opened her eyes. He had expected to see fear for the rage that had scorched his voice. To his surprise, her eyes met his full of hope, and earnest need. Relieved, he stroked the tears away. He sighed and shook his head, trying not to cry himself. "I don't care that we screwed things up the first time." softly now, the words barely escaping his mouth as he searched her eyes for a response, "I care that you love me..."

"I do... I love you." Shepherd's voice was full of sorrow, but he nearly laughed in joy of hearing her say those words – the reassurance that he wasn't the complete and utter fool his father would say he was for behaving in such a way – with a human no less. He had died before hearing her utter those words to him the first time she had spoken them to him.

"I said I'd always be with you, didn't I?" His voice was nearly breaking again in his desperation as he searched her eyes again for reassurance, but to his insurmountable relief she nodded, and smiled. He steadied his voice, and pressed his forehead to hers as she stared up at him, calm now. He cupped a hand to her face as he spoke, "Well I damn well mean to follow through with it." He slid his fingers slowly over her silky skin.

"Always?" a small voice escaped from a hopeful smile. She was _so _damned beautiful, even more so when she was this fragile. He didn't know if it was nerves – they were wracked to Hell – or if he was just insane, but he felt this overwhelming _need_ to be inside her. He wanted to show her in _every_ way that by her side was where he meant to stay. He lined himself up, relieved to feel her wet warmth already spilling forth from her as he brushed close in preparation, spurred on when she gasped at the touch.

"Always." He growled confidently, staring into her eyes as slowly he slid himself into her. He smiled with pride as she groaned in relief, throwing her head back as he came to lie back over her. She was so moist that he found himself nearly totally enclosed by her. He couldn't help but growl with deep satisfaction, feeling her pulse in a tightening grip around him as she tensed her thighs to pull him into her completely – deep as he could go. Nearly blinded by the intensity of sensation he moved slowly at first, her fingers caressing him everywhere they could reach. He could no longer think in words as he began to lose himself inside her.

He looked down to see himself slipping in and out of her as she stroked over his tensed arms and shoulders. He listened keenly to her... Oh how he loved the _sounds_ she made! She moaned and groaned and cried out in a language that called to him, begging him for more and he gave it – anything to keep them both here like this. He slid his fingers over her body and around her thighs, stroking down to her rounded muscular behind, bracing her as he pushed in each time as deeply as he could. In steady strokes he moved inside her as he nuzzled into her breasts. She curled her fingers over his fronds and massaged the sensitive skin between and underneath, beckoning him towards ever-hardening pleasure with every sound she made. His fingers tingled with the heat of her body. Her skin wet with sweat, and his skin slid frictionless over hers. They worked each other's muscles into fever. His fingers drew lines down her slender form to which she would respond internally: sending shocks of heightening arousal to him with each renewed joining of their hips.

He wished he could stay like this forever. _Always be with you, _he thought to her. He swore he'd never leave her side – _never._ He was hers, and would stay that way until he died. He swore _that _ too. He watched her abdomen tense and felt the grip of her powerful thighs as she pulled his hips to hers. He nuzzled into her neck to take in her musky scent. He could feel her approaching the threshold, pace and pulsing quickening, and heaven so help him: _he was right there with her_. He roared with the effort it took as he forced himself out of nuzzling her neck to grab the back of her skull and pull her head towards his as he barred his teeth. Just as he let go, just as he released himself into her, being finally unable to restrain himself any longer... She opened her eyes and stared pure strength into his roar as she let loose her own, grabbing hold of his hand as she did so and gripping it so tightly he had to squeeze back.

He groaned with the continuing aftershocks as she pulsed internal contractions around him, and he steadily rocked in smaller motions inside her tightening grip. She drained him to the last as she clung to him making unbearably enticing small moans of satisfaction. For the longest time after that they simply lay panting – he purring between breaths, she murmuring tiny moans, each in concert recovery from overwhelming pleasure. His thoughts were numbed for a time as he lay staring into her eyes. Finally he squeezed her hand gently and withdrew a little, but his strength faltered and he pressed into her again making her groan with heightened sensitivity. Again he looked into her eyes and his heart skipped a beat in surprise. _Huh... wasn't expecting __that__ kind of reaction..._

She stroked down his scarred face, tracing the now-old wounds with her fingertips. He huffed in bewildered amusement as he was again reminded that anyone else save a krogan would probably _not_ have found him that attractive, at least not anymore. Even humans seemed to shy away from scars... But Shepherd smiled tenderly as she traced those that adorned most of that side of his face. She was special, but he damn well knew that. _I wish I'd found __you__ years ago, not 'Commander' Shepherd – I wish I'd known __this__ side of you._ So much of his life could have been more bearable had he _this_ to come home to – maybe he could even have lived a simple life: _no chasing around the galaxy, she wouldn't have had to die, I wouldn't have had to die or nearly die twice..._ But who was he trying to kid? He knew truthfully he'd never have settled for that kind of life, and neither would she. That was perhaps what made them such a perfect fit. Oh and she is _definitely_ a perfect fit...

Still, he _was_ wondering if there could be a way to have some of that now... After all, who knows when the Reapers would actually turn up? For all they knew, the Reapers might do the smart thing and just wait a hundred years or so to be sure Shepherd was either far too old or dead and buried before carrying on with their plans... After all they'd been waiting a few million years for galactic civilisation to grow and mature, what's the harm in a few hundred years more? Then he could have Shepherd to himself... Except he knew deep down that some other emergency would take the Reapers' place. But then again it would probably be better for the galaxy if the Reapers _didn't_ wait... Better they either weren't that smart, not that patient, or for some other reason could not wait... In any case, he swore to be with her when she faced them. _I wouldn't want to miss out on the fun._

With a smile on his face he realised his mind had wondered – meaning time enough had passed for it to have wondered. Nervously part of him was now worrying about when this moment was going to end, and he waited for something to bring them crashing back into the world and its woes... But nothing did. He smirked, pleased that the crew of the Normandy had kept to their word. Even if all hell was breaking lose, he and Shepherd were not being informed of it. Shepherd's eyes darted around the room as she wondered the same thing, listening keenly for a moment in case of alarm, but none came – there was only the mute sound of the ship's engines and the bubbling of the fish tank. _Just me and the fish... _she recalled he'd said earlier, it had made her laugh. With a sigh she found herself thinking: _No. I think really there has only __ever__ been you Garrus..._ Nobody had ever been as close to her emotionally as he was. Weird as it was he meant everything to her now.

They relaxed, and returned to reality slowly, of their own free will: no imminent battle, death or destruction to face. Shepherd smirked and raised an eyebrow. "48 hrs, you said?" The confidence was back, and it was actually a little unnerving for Garrus – for it was his commander staring back at him now, between whose legs he lay: still _very_ deep inside her... But it was a good thing – the barriers were back up, but not because of anything bad. She'd simply rested, and returned to herself.

"48 hrs." Garrus nodded, echoing confidently. "Well... maybe more like 46hrs, now." He smirked and she laughed, sending internal spasms through their connection, making him shiver and hold his breath until she finished – it was a most peculiar sensation. He stared into her eyes long enough for his mind to wonder back to thinking about how wonderful she was, and how lucky he was to be here right now. He really was getting sentimental with his age... Kindness spread across his expression. He looked away for a moment, like he was working himself up to something. Shepherd watched him with curiosity as he then looked back at her and released her hand from his.

Hesitating briefly, he then placed his thumb on the bridge of her nose and then gently stroked back up and over her forehead, combing his fingers over her skull and through her silky soft hair. Shepherd pushed into his hand, blinking as he did so and smiled – she was sure she remembered him doing that the first time they had been together. In fact, she had remembered the action so vividly that she had performed it herself as he lay dying in her arms. She remembered it seemed to mean so much to him at the time... Shrugging off that sad memory in favour of recollecting recent events, she looked at him with renewed interest. She was certain now that the gesture had some deeper or symbolic meaning, especially when he waited expectantly until she reciprocated. She smiled and pressed her thumb to the bridge of his nose and stroked upwards over the armoured bumpy ridges, and drew her fingers back over his fringe, sliding them between the fronds as she did so. He seemed to sigh with some great relief.

"What does that..." Shepherd tried to ask, she did not want to spoil the moment or insult him, although suddenly her voice sounded so very _loud_... Clearly there was something about turians – well something _else_ anyway – that she did not yet understand. "Sorry... Umn...." She tried to guise her question in humour. "The human is lost here and is thinking clearly there is something she's missing with regards to turian culture..." Garrus simply raised a brow. _Fine I guess I'll have to ask, then_. She thought to herself. "That gesture... has some significance. What is it..?"

Garrus smiled, and she swore if he could blush she would have seen him do so. He ducked his eyes nervously for a moment as he thought carefully about his answer. He pulled himself from her, making her moan mournfully, and climbed back up onto the bed. Shepherd, followed him, pulling herself back up the bed until she reached the pillow that still remained near the headrest. Garrus collapsed and lay beside her, pulling her closer to him by her waist and quietly held her hand. She waited patiently.

"Turians..." he began hesitantly, "well we don't really... Uh... At least, uh... Well there is normally a ceremony but..." He cleared his throat, evidently nervous. "I'm giving you the wrong idea." He shook his head as she began to smile from ear to ear, "I don't mean it _that_ way, I mean I'm not _not_ meaning it that way. You and me... this has become, I think, no I knew it the moment I touched you that it _is_ serious, and..." His eyebrows lifted in quirky amusement and he let go this huge sigh of disappointment. "Wow. I didn't think my tongue could ever make me sound _this _bad..." He _really_ wanted to go crawl into a corner somewhere...

"Hey..." She touched his mandible and settled its nervous agitation. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that. You can tell me about it later, OK? Whenever you're ready. For now I'm just happy it seems to mean something important, something good." She said confidently, reassuring him. He really did want to explain it to her, but he was relieved to leave it for a while. He hadn't really planned that part yet, so words were a bit of a jumble where explanation was involved. Still, there _was_ the tiniest doubt in her eyes, asking for a reassurance that she'd at least got the right impression. He worked to find the words to give it to her.

"It... _is_ something good. _Definitely_ something good." He squeezed her hand. "It's private... something only for you and for me, our being together. I promise you I'll tell you about it when I've done a little more research – I want to make sure I can explain it properly without making a complete ass of myself."

"Alright." she smiled, and stroked down from his temple to under his chin. The tenderness in her touch settled his nerves. He _would_ explain it later and do it properly, as should be done. Then, closing the subject with much resulting laughter from the pair of them, Shepherd dropped her voice and commanded: "C'mon then let's get up: I'm damned _hungry_ again."

* * *

Author note: Can't believe how many errors I still found reading through the whole story again months later! Hence taking it all down and putting it back up again. All 'Shepherd's now changed to 'Shepard's. Hope you've enjoyed reading my story as much as I enjoyed writing it.


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